


This Place at the Crossroads

by alpha_hydra



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-14
Updated: 2010-10-14
Packaged: 2017-10-12 22:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpha_hydra/pseuds/alpha_hydra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starfleet intelligence says that Earth is decades away from developing warp-technology. Then again, Starfleet intell didn’t count on one James Tiberius Kirk getting anywhere near the issue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this came to me one day watching Michio Kaku's tv show Sci-fi Science and the episodes about building an interstellar spaceship. That is first how I was introduced to Miguel Alcubierre and his paper The Warp Drive: Hyper-fast Travel Within General Relativity, which inspired a great portion of the fake!science in this. Other references include: Richard Obousy and Gerald Cleaver's paper Warp Drive: A New Approach, lots of Wikipedia abuse and just general consulting of Memory Alpha, Memory Beta, and my mathematics textbook.  
> Before I get into the actual fic, I need to thank some folks: First, I want to thank vellum, who was a super-awesome beta and put up with my last minute scramble to the finish line, adrya00 who said that my two points of view sounded too similar, and subsequently made this thing suitable for human eyes, summerslaughter , who liked the idea so much she signed up to be both my artist and mixer, and didn't run away screaming when I emailed her a truly hideous Quasi-Modo-style version of the story and even made me fabulous little page breakers while she was at it, shimshake for general cheerleading, mutual k/s flails and assuring me that people actually find my story interesting, and chickienine , for listening to me whine about this since pretty much day one, not getting sick of my complaining and woe even though she doesn't even ship k/s, cheering me on in the depths of my despair and making disapproving faces at me when I (rather frequently) decided to give up on this thing.  
> Warnings for gratuitous use of Fake!Science, cannon-fuckery, and BAMF-ensemble work, one of whom is an OFC

Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan stands before the Vulcan High Council with the four representatives of the leaders of the Federation and Starfleet. They are Cardassian, Ferengi, Betazoid, and Andorian, and together they provide a united front to make their case to the Vulcan High Council. The hall is silent, and while the room has been designed to let in natural light, it is dark with the anticipation of a proper morning.

“Peace and long life, Ambassador Sarek,” T’Pau of Vulcan intones solemnly. “What business brings you before the council today as a civilian?”

Ambassador Sarek nods his head in acknowledgment of the Vulcan.

“We have come to request a ship of the Vulcan Science Academy to be commissioned for the Federation,” he says. “The Federation is considering First Contact with Sol III. I have suggested we allow a member of the Federation a time of observation on the planet to assess the readiness of its populace for such an endeavor.”

The Vulcan at the end of the High Table shifts in his seat slightly. His name is Sardak, and hair is dark grey in the shadows of the chamber, his eyes unforgiving and icy.

“What significance might Sol III have for the Federation?” he asks.

“Sol III is in contested space,” Sarek explains. “Its cosmological neighbor, Draylax, has long sought to lay claim upon that region of space so that it might create the beginnings of an empire.”

“Is the planet warp-capable?” the youngest of the High Table asks.

“It is not,” Sarek answers. “Starfleet intelligence, however, has reason to believe it may yet achieve warp technology within the next two decades.”

“And, if a Vulcan ship were to be commissioned for this experiment, how would it defend itself should a Draylaxian vessel attack?” Sardak asks. “Draylax is a known sympathizer to the Klingon Empire, which grows in number and wartime technology every day. A vessel of the Vulcan Science Academy would be ill-equipped to defend itself.”

“How would you know anything of the Klingon Empire?” the Cardassian asks as a murmur sweeps through the Federation representatives.

“It matters not from where I have obtained this information, only that it is known,” Sardak answers dismissively.

“The task we are to set is one of high priority, and therefore, immense secrecy,” Sarek says, silencing the Cardassian with a swift, knowing look. “We hope to use a ship of the Science Academy, as its studies are renown throughout the federation for stealth and discretion. None but those directly involved will have any knowledge of this endeavor.”

The High Council is silent at that. The Vulcans exchange glances with one another while Sarek and his troop await the decision.

“Very well,” Sardak says at long last. “We will grant the Federation the proper funds and supplies it will need for such an endeavor. We will also recommend that Spock, son of Sarek, may lead this enterprise.”

Ambassador Sarek clasps his hands behind his back and does not quirk an eyebrow.

“I am sorry Sardak, son of Kilev,” he begins, “but I do not understand the logic behind your decision to recruit my son into this project.”

“It is only a suggestion, Sarek. If you find a more logical candidate for this endeavor, then you are free to disregard our suggestion.”

“Your suggestion,” Sarek repeats. “I see.”

The Federation representatives offer no response to that; they all know that a recommendation from the High Council is as good as law; how heavy the words of six Vulcan senators can be on the Federation that Vulcan itself had founded only a handful of decades ago. After a pause, Sarek begins again.

“Ministers, I thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Live long and prosper.”

“Peace, and long life,” they return as one.

 

****

  
"Look Jim, it's all well and good for you to talk about those equations for your thesis, but practically? The technology doesn't exist."

And okay, yeah, Jim sort of gets that; blah blah blah funding issues. _Whatever._ But he knows somewhere in the pit of his stomach that his equations aren't just theoretical science. This could really work.

"Pike, look—"

But Pike just shoots him that glare over the top of the desk, the one that had him fidgeting in his seat with something really close to contrition a few years back. Now it hardly even ruffles his feathers. Jim shuts his mouth and pouts.

"I'll call up some friends at the International Center for Space Exploration; see if we can drum up some funding for you. Just go enjoy your doctorate or something."

Jim grins, wide and relieved, salutes sloppily and makes Pike roll his eyes.

"Sure thing, Admiral."

Christopher Pike is a retired Admiral, who now works closely with the ICSE (formerly known as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration before it got swallowed up by the Federal Union), and is pretty familiar with the latest technological advances. He knows what he’s talking about.

But Pike is wrong about this. Jim doesn't care what anyone fucking says about his thesis; those guys at Cambridge can all go to Hell as far as Jim’s concerned. He’s tortured himself over the math involved for nearly three goddamn years, and the certainty that flows through his veins isn't idle hope, but the sheer calm that numbers always bring to him. He can feel it vibrating under his skin, excitement and hope in equal measure. Interstellar space travel is possible.

He remembers when he finally got those damn equations right, when he'd abandoned his brand new PADD and had written the whole set on those out-of-date white boards, stepping back from the numbers and dropping his marker because, holy shit, he'd done that. Most of his professors still think he's crazy; he's got a bunch of email rotting on his PADD from his physics professor in particular, explaining to Jim ad nauseam how it's impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, and never mind any of that space-warping business Jim's been prattling on about in his papers.

And so, because he's officially James Tiberius Kirk, PhD and his thesis has been published and is considered a breakthrough in space travel, he sends the guy a copy of his paper and tries not to be too smug about it.

When he gets back to his apartment, he finds that Bones is still locked in his room, feigning sleep (read: nursing a hangover). But because Jim is the best Best Friend Ever, he only stays long enough to grab his leather jacket and put the aspirin and a glass of water somewhere in plain sight. He is, however, a self-proclaimed douchebag, so he opens all the windows and lets the bright afternoon sunlight flood the living room-slash-kitchenette, and slams the door behind him.

Already there's an email from Pike on his PADD. On it is a name, an address, and a single sentence. _You'll need to set up a team if you want to go through with this; Scotty's a good place to start._

Jim smirks down at the screen before pulling up a browser and finding where exactly this Scotty guy lives. He makes plans to drop in and introduce himself later on in the week, reigning in his enthusiasm just a bit. Out there somewhere, the galaxy is calling, but he’s got a date with the beach, a can of beer, and a girl in a little pink bikini that he can’t miss.

The galaxy’ll be there when he gets back.

And besides, the sun’s out, and summer’s starting with a PhD on his wall and a dream for the future bright in his heart, and Jim Kirk really sort of loves his life.

 

 

****

  
Spock has not been in communication with his father in three-point-six years now, since the afternoon when he formally announced his intention to transfer from the Vulcan Science Academy to Starfleet. He still vividly recalls the disappointment Sarek had not allowed to show on his face, the unsubtle press of his lips as Spock tried to explain to him the logic behind his decision.

Spock himself sees the logic in his decision, and this fact alone is enough to keep him content. And yet, when Spock receives a transmission from his father one day, he cannot say that he is unaffected by the attempt at possible discourse.

It is Starfleet business that Sarek wishes to speak of, and while it is not precisely unheard of for an ambassador to relay specific Starfleet information to him, Spock maintains the illogical hope that perhaps his father has given in to a pesky Betazoid emotion that Amanda has no doubt hammered into him after decades of marriage.

The message is unsurprisingly formal. Sarek maintains his requisite aloofness as he explains his upcoming mission, one that Spock is quite ill-prepared to carry out. He has a double-focus in general mineralogy and organic chemistry, a secondary specialization in comparative xenobiology, and is scheduled to serve in a three-year mission as Science Officer aboard the Federation class starship _T’Plana Hath_ once he has finished his fourth year in Starfleet, in approximately seven point two months. He is still only a Lieutenant Commander. In no way is he qualified to head a sudden Intelligence operation.

And yet, Sarek’s face stares up at him from the prerecorded subspace transmission, unwavering as he explains the details of the endeavor to Spock. Priority level delta-blue, to be executed as soon as Spock has notified anyone with whom he may have had prior Starfleet engagements.

Spock will have to speak with Captain Nog, although he has a suspicion that Sarek’s formal courtesy would have seen that his commanding officer had been notified already. At any rate, Captain Nog is a Ferengi, and he has mentioned to Spock on several occasions that he understands when occurrences do not play out as one would hope. Spock is sure he will understand. It falls within the 88th percentile that Captain Nog will want to be a part of this assignment in some way also. He is fairly certain he will see the Captain at least once before he warps out to Sol III.

However, there is something decidedly suspicious about sending an under-trained Starfleet cadet onto a delicate mission that would have had a statistically higher chance for success with either an ambassador or an officer trained in stealth. That the Vulcan High Council has recommended him, too, is cause for concern; he does not understand why he would have been singled out by a group of Vulcans who have very little cause to respect him.

Hypotheses begin to coalesce in his mind, nothing more than un-Vulcan intuition with his lack of facts. However, he has received his orders from Starfleet Command, and the most Spock can do now is find another member of Starfleet who would in some way be useful to him in this unexpected endeavor.

Preferably, Spock needs someone who has at least been exposed to the mysterious planet Sol III before, as Spock has never heard of it before today. And while this narrows his search down considerably (the only ship to have catalogued Sol III as a planet worth note is the _Mor’deck_ , whose crew at the time consisted of little more than three hundred Starfleet personnel), it is still tedious work, to wade through the records of the 167 crewmembers that may be of some assistance to him.

In the end, he sends a message to a Lieutenant Commander Gaila, who only has a secondary specialization on interplanetary relations and would not have ordinarily attracted Spock’s attention. However, she was part of the _Mor’deck’s_ landing party, and in her extensive report on the planet, makes note of it as one which would assimilate well to the Federation.

He receives an answer to his query less than a day later. Commander Gaila is Orion, and she beams at Spock through the open connection as she goes on at length on how she would be honored to accompany Spock on his mission.

“Will you be able to secure passage to Vulcan?” he asks.

“Yeah it shouldn’t be a problem,” the Commander says brightly. “I’ll get there ASAP.”

“I see. If it is acceptable, I would send you the briefing for this assignment, along with the coordinates of your final destination once you reach the Vulcan Spaceport.”

“Perfect,” she answers; Spock can detect motion just off the screen. He supposes she is searching for something. “Is it cool if I ask for specific details?”

“Everything you will need to know can be found in the document I will send,” is the answer. Spock hesitates before adding, “However, I can say that it has to do with Sol III and the possibility of its entering into the Federation.”

The Commander twists her lips into an expression Spock has trouble identifying.

“Perfect,” she says again. “I can’t wait for that transmission.”

Spock inclines his head.

“I will await you in the appropriate spaceport,” he answers. “Live long and prosper.”

He waits until she has given him the standard Orion salute (“Pleasure find you”) before he cuts the transmission and sends her the briefing Sarek has attached to his own communication. Then, he reserves a seat on the next available shuttle to transport him from the T’Khut branch of Starfleet to the Vulcan Science Academy in Shi’Khar.

It would be a lie to say he is eager to return to Vulcan, as he has made it a point to give the planet a wide berth since his transfer. And although he has not traveled far—Vulcan’s sister planet has such a close orbit that at times Vulcan dominates the night sky and leaves the entire night as bright as dusk—it is still far enough away from the shame his species would bestow on him. To make matters worse, the ship he is to appropriate is from the Vulcan Science Academy; the one edifice Spock is sure he will not be welcome into.

However, what is cannot be changed. So, he packs a light bag with items he predicts will become useful on his mission, anticipating the hostility that will surely await him. He expects to spend the next two hours meditating, preparing himself mentally for the brief ordeal.


	2. This Place at the Crossroads (1/5)

  
Scotty is an engineer. He is also, apparently, insane. When Kirk knocks on his door Wednesday afternoon, this honest-to-god _goddess_ opens the door in nothing but an oversized tee and white panties.

“Hi,” Jim says awkwardly, trying to hold in the sleazy come-on that’s on the tip of his tongue. “I’m looking for Scotty?”

“Oh,” she answers, and Jim never knew he could hear so much goddamn derision in a single syllable before. She smiles tightly at him, and he wonders if maybe he once insulted her honor or something, with the way she seems to immediately dislike him. “Give me a second.”

The door snaps shut in his face, and Jim has a moment to scrub at his eyes tiredly; he so doesn’t need this so early in the morning after the time he’d had last night, but, as Bones would say, it’s really his own damn his fault he got hammered anyway, so he’ll deal. When the door nearly explodes open again, Jim staggers back in surprise, and this manic-looking guy grabs onto his forearm and propels Jim inside.

“You’re Pike’s boy then?” he asks, leading Jim into a cluttered living room. Nearly every inch of wall space is covered by those antique-looking processors straight out of the early 21st century, all blinking and shining with dark lines of code. “Pike said you were headstrong, but I didn’t expect you to come around so soon, did I?”

“Umm,” Jim answers as the Goddess saunters back into the room, this time wearing a pair of dark jeans and some boots that come up to the knee.

Her long, dark hair sweeps down to her lower back, and for a second, all Jim can see is the contrast between her black hair and the white of her shirt. She leans against the counter that divides the kitchen from the living room and smiles at Scotty. Scotty sends her a megawatt grin before turning back to Jim.

“Introductions, then?” Scotty says, pushing him into a truly hideous lime-green armchair and holding out his hand politely like he hadn’t just been manhandling Jim for the past few minutes. “Name’s Montgomery Scott. Go by Scotty though, don’t I? And that’s Uhura, best linguist this side of the Solar System; can even outmatch those buggers from Europa. Can’t make a pot of coffee to save her life though,” he adds in a stage whisper. Uhura scowls and throws what looks like a rolled up sock at Scotty’s head. He ducks it expertly before continuing. “What’s your name again?”

“James Tiberius Kirk, but you guys can call me Jim,” he answers, shaking Scotty’s hand. He turns to Uhura and gives her a smile. “Uhura.”

“Kirk,” she says around a smile that looks more like a threat.

“So what do you need? Letters of recommendation? Cheat codes? I’m not letting you in to see the still though. What, do you think I’m some kind of idiot?”

“No, actually,” Jim says and briefly wonders where the hell Pike found this guy. “Actually, I kind of want to build a starship.”

“What are you doing here then?” he asks, waving a hand dismissively. “That’s what the galactic/aeronautic division of the Federal Union is for, isn’t it?”

Uhura disappears behind the room divider when the kettle whistles, and glides in again, holding two cups of steaming coffee. She offers one to Jim, and he accepts it with a smile, taking an experimental sip. It’s actually pretty good.

“Are you the same James Kirk who wrote that paper in _Space Travel_ last month?” she asks.

“Yeah. You read it?”

“Hold on a sec,” Scotty says, joining Uhura on the faded maroon couch opposite Jim. His expression changes from friendly to floored in the blink of an eye. “‘Hyper-Fast Space Travel and Its Significance on Modern Earth’? That was you?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jim answers, rubbing at the back of his neck.

They’re silent for a while, Scotty and Uhura exchanging an indecipherable look. An old computer in the background makes a high-pitched whining sound, and one of the outdated flatscreens goes blank.

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Scotty finally says. “That what you want then? A warp-capable machine?”

“Yeah.”

Scotty blinks once and looks away thoughtfully. When he meets Jim’s gaze again, his smile’s as bright as the sun.

“Well, count us in Laddie, this is bound to be a ride.”

So, it turns out that both Scotty and Uhura are pretty familiar with Jim's paper on warp travel; they all discuss it at length in the cluttered living room once it’s established that even though Uhura’s a communications expert, she’s still pretty awesome with applied mechanics. They hit Jim's biggest problem really early on—namely, that with Earth's current technological advances, they don't really have enough energy to be able to fuel an engine of that scope. He gets into an argument with Uhura about it, about dark energy versus controlled fusion cores, and just before she kicks his ass (terrifying because she could probably do it and not even break a sweat), Scotty whistles loudly and makes a few phone calls.

"Don't worry lads," he says happily. "My top engineers'll be here in a jiff."

"I didn't realize we'd be assembling an engineering team now," Uhura retorts, just this side of kidding. "I would have worn my good boots."

Scotty laughs, waving away the lingering ugliness of Uhura's mood.

When the doorbell rings, Uhura's the one who answers it, and she lets in two girls who’re right around Jim's age. Jim plasters on his patented Jim Kirk Smile of Pure Awesome; Uhura rolls her eyes at him.

"Record time ladies," Scotty says from his seat. After a second of what looks like intense deliberation, he bounds out of his seat and motions emphatically for Jim to do the same. "Jim, was it? This is Janice Rand and Gloria Ortiz. Rand and Ortiz are my two best TAs down at the University. Rand, Ortiz, this is Jim Kirk."

“Wait, hold on a sec,” Jim says, rounding back to Scotty with his eyebrows in his hairline. “You’re a teacher? Since when? And, more importantly, how did I never end up in a class with you?”

“Only ever taught on Saturdays, didn’t I?” he answers. “Got things to be doing over the weekday.”

He sends Uhura a meaningful glance at that, which has her blushing. Which is…pretty weird, but he’s sidetracked from that little exchange when one of the girls steps forward and offers her hand to him.

“Janice Rand, Mr. Kirk,” she says and shakes his hand enthusiastically, her blond hair bouncing with the force of her nod. “This is Gloria Ortiz.”

Ortiz is more reserved; she smiles tightly and nods her head once in acknowledgment, dark hair is pulled back in a sloppy bun. She’s got really large, dark eyes and high cheek bones, and even though she's a few inches shorter than the rest of them, Jim gets the feeling that she's probably as tough as Uhura.

"So, Rand, Ortiz, you two ready to change the world?" Scotty asks.

"Have been for three years now," Rand responds happily.

"Jim Kirk here needs a reliable source of energy for a powerful sort of engine," Scotty begins. "One that won't be able to use jet propulsion as we know it. Got any ideas?"

And with that, they get down to business.

Rand says that they have to design a completely different type of engine than what they’re used to if they’re planning on quadrupling the energy input, and after a long argument with Scotty, Jim and Uhura agree on building schematics for it.

And yeah, it turns out that Pike was right; the technology to build it doesn’t quite exist yet; the steel alloys that protect an average antimatter core are too weak to safely house the energy Jim’s calculated the would need to get the ship moving, but Ortiz, Rand and Scotty are brilliant to watch when they’ve got their minds on Engineering. That first day they brainstorm on all the different possibilities that are available to them.

At this rate, they’ll be out in deep space in no time.

Except a week comes and goes, and then another two with nothing to show for it except a mountain of frustration, and Jim's kind of starting to hate his life.

“No see, the casing needs to stretch and contract easily at the subatomic level without changing its chemical composition,” Ortiz says from one end of the room.

“And I’m telling you, aluminum stretches,” Rand bites back, one hand bunched up in her hair while she stares at the figures on the computer she’s sharing with Ortiz.

“Aluminum’s too light Janice,” Ortiz answers, throwing her hands into the air. “We’ve been through this.”

“I’m not ready to give up on aluminum,” she says. “It’s the closest answer we’ve got.”

“It’s still wrong. If you want to go around changing the properties of aluminum—”

“Maybe I will,” Rand answers.

“Jim, are you listening?” Uhura asks, and Jim looks away from Rand and Ortiz’s argument to the mountain of blueprints before them.

“Yeah,” he answers. “Where are the schematics for that dark matter core we were working on yesterday?”

Uhura shuffles through the stack of thin schematic’s paper until she unearths the specific design Jim wants. They flatten it out onto the only clear space on their worktable, and Jim inspects it thoroughly.

“Here,” he says, tapping at a portion of the drawing. “Why’d you add in the water vent?”

“Because it’s a pressurized water reactor,” Uhura answers, kind of like he’s four years old.

Jim shakes his head, frowning.

“We can’t risk the neutron absorption,” he says, crossing out the cooling system. “We need a liquid metal to cool this monster.”

Uhura clunks her head against the workstation, elbows framing either side of her head in obvious frustration.

“You could have said something before I worked the damn model out,” she answers.

“I thought I did,” he answers honestly. “I must have told Scotty instead.”

“Which reminds me,” Uhura answers, picking her head up and staring at the door thoughtfully. “Where is he?”

“He’s with Pike,” he says. “They’re figuring out the whole funding issue so we can go starship shopping.”

“Oh joy,” Uhura says, letting her head fall back onto the wooden workstation.

Jim pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs heavily.

“I’m gonna go transfer these onto my mini-CAD program,” he says, picking up the stack of blueprints wearily. “You stay here and try not to have a breakdown.”

Uhura flips him off without picking her head up, and Jim saunters away with a reluctant smile on his face.

Weeks go by painstakingly slow. Theoretically, this should work; all his equations are perfect—he and Uhura have finally settled on a workable core configuration that won’t have them blown to bits, and Rand stubbornly convinced Ortiz and Scotty to help her with something she’s tentatively calling “Transparent Aluminum,” which sounds like a promising solution if it’s actually possible.

It's just. Once they figure out how to build the core; they still need to figure out what’ll power the thing. Finding a workable energy source turns out to be a problem.

“Thing is,” Jim says one day in a fit of frustration. “This should work.”

"There's not enough energy on the planet to produce the kind of massive influx it'll need," Rand says, pouring over the latest copy of their schematics in Scotty and Uhura's living room. It’s going on two months now, and they’re nowhere closer to getting this project off the ground since they started. Ortiz is typing manically on one of the old flat screen computers, scrolling through lines of unfinished code. "I don't think this will actually work."

"It has to," Uhura says from the opposite end of the room, fiddling with a piece of a gear with a determined glint in her eyes. It’s pretty dim in this room, especially since Scotty and Uhura keep the blinds closed; he wonders how she can actually see those little parts like this. "Mathematically, it could work. Scotty ran it through some computer-generated sims; it works."

"Yeah, but if we don't have the energy to power it, what do we have?" Ortiz asks.

"A load of god damn scrap metal," Jim interject mildly; he's got six simulations running on his laptop, trying out viable energy sources for the computerized prototype as soon as Rand comes up with them. None so far can generate even 80 percent of the energy they need, and it’s starting to get him antsy. "Where's Scotty anyway?" he asks, running a hand through his hair.

"On campus," Rand says again, twirling a strand of hair through her fingers. "Said he needed something for…something. Did he tell you, Nyota?"

“No, he just said he’d be back by—”

"Hold on a second," Jim says, looking up from his screen to blink at the three of them. Uhura is scowling darkly at him; it occurs to Jim that he's been in a room with three beautiful women for nearing on five hours now, and he hasn't even tried to make a pass at any of them. When did this become his life? "I thought you're name was Uhura."

"It is. My last name's Uhura."

"So why can't I call you Nyota?"

Ortiz and Rand both stifle giggles. If it were possible to murder with a single look, Jim thinks he’d probably be dead by now.

"Just. _Don't._ "

Scotty takes that moment to bound through the doors in a whirlwind of noise and movement; he hauls in a large, heavy-looking crate and dumps it in the only clear spot in the living room with a loud crash.

"What did you just drop on my floor?" Uhura asks incredulously.

Scotty beams at her, throwing off his jacket and flinging it clear across the living room.

"That's a store o’ lithium," Scotty says proudly. "A few kilos worth. I’ve got more in the trunk."

“Oh god, you’re kidding right?”

“Oh come on lass,” Scotty frowns madly; Jim wonders if he knows the meaning of ‘subtle.’ “It’s thirty kilos. Of Lithium.”

Rand frowns, even as she stands and stretches. Jim hears the bones of her wrists and back pop quietly. She picks her way through the mess of metal, wires, and blueprints that litter the floor and kneels beside the crate with a curious expression on her face.

"Where'd you get this from? A rummage sale? Were they selling it on the pound?" she asks.

"What? Come on now; it's lithium," Scotty stresses, as if that should mean something to any of them. "It's our best bet for gettin' this ship off the ground now, isn't it?"

That seems to get Ortiz's attention. She gets up and cranes her neck slightly, sending Jim a significant-looking eyebrow raise as she does so.

“Lithium’s too stable to generate our cores,” she says, tapping her computer screen with a repetitive _clack, clack clack._

Scotty looks crestfallen.

“Mark my words lasses,” he says darkly, “before this is over, you’ll be begging to get at my stores of lithium.”

Rand and Ortiz both roll their eyes. Uhura does that thing where it looks like she’s pissed but is secretly laughing. Jim has a very terrifying moment where he thinks he might have actually gone insane and decides that officially, enough is enough.

“I’m going home,” he tells the room at large. “I need one of three things: sleep, booze, or sex. I’ll be back when I get it.”

“Good luck finding any one of them,” Uhura calls over her shoulder as he opens the door.

“My heart Uhura,” he says with a smile, “you’re breaking it. Ripping it in half.”

Uhura’s laugh follows him all the way home.

When he finally gets to sleep that night, he dreams of the warp engine. There’s not much he remembers about it, but he wakes up gasping and shaking, the horror of an utter cosmological catastrophe still fresh in his mind. He can’t help reaching for his phone and sending a mass text to his engineers.

 _Do not rip the fabric of spacetime, guys. Not good._

He doesn’t get a response, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that it’s four forty-six in the morning. He sighs, knowing he won’t be able to get back to sleep anytime soon. So he gets up and powers on his computer, resigning himself to fixing up the system matrix for the newest design of their engine.

****

Spock meets the Commander at the civilian spaceport in Raal five minutes after sunrise. Before Spock contacted her, Gaila had been completing her studies on Betazed, and so it did not take longer than a standard Vulcan day for her to make the trip. Spock locates her near the Luggage Reclamation Area, her bright red hair unmistakable in the crowd. When she apparently sees him seconds later, she waves her arms expansively, accidentally hitting an imposing looking Cardassian who is standing beside her.

When her bags are beamed down from the ship, she grabs them quickly and dashes towards him.

"Mister Spock!" she calls out.

"Lieutenant Commander," Spock responds deliberately, leveling her with an even gaze. "If you would follow me."

"Sure thing, Lieutenant Commander," she says with a wink; Spock turns on his heel and leads the way out into the Vulcan morning. “Oh, and call me Gaila, by the way. Everyone does.”

Spock has no intention of doing so. However, he makes a noise low in his throat that she would surely translate into acquiescence and lets the subject drop.

"So, where're we going?" Gaila asks suddenly, her long black skirt swirling about her ankles in a sudden hot breeze. “You said we were commissioned a starship, but didn’t mention from where.”

"The Science Academy," Spock responds, hoping his distaste for the place does not show in his voice.

"Okay, that's kinda weird."

"'Weird' has variable definitions," he says. "The most common of which would indeed be aptly applied to the situation. However, the High Council specifically requested our presence there."

"Oh yeah? Why would they--"

"It is not our place to question the High Council," Spock replies sharply.

He himself has been asking himself those same questions, and is not eager to speak on the subject until he has acquired more information. When the next public transit heading towards the Science Academy stops before the spaceport, Spock and Gaila board it in silence.

It takes less than an hour (forty-two minutes and zero-six seconds) to reach Shi’khar and the science academy. The building itself remains unchanged after four years, and Spock doubts that its students and professors have changed much in those intervening years either.

Spock easily maneuvers them into the shipping gallery, where currently three ships—all in various stages of completion—seem to await them. The only usable ship, however, sits at the far end of the warehouse, and as they make their way towards it, Spock notices someone standing beside it, pacing in a way that indicates impatience in most beings. When the features of their associate come into focus, Spock is relieved to note that it is Captain Nog who awaits them (he is not sure who, exactly, he had expected, but Spock cannot deny that when Captain Nog waves them forward he slowly lets out a calm, measured breath).

“Spock!” he calls when they are within earshot. “On time, as always.”

“Captain,” Spock responds with a nod of his head. He motions vaguely to the Orion beside him. “This is Lieutenant Commander Gaila; she is at the top of her class in xenocultural studies at the Academy at Betazed. She will also be accompanying me on this endeavor.”

The Captain smiles at her warmly.

“Lieutenant Commander, welcome," he says genially. "My name’s Captain Nog; I've been Commander Spock's superior officer for a little over a year now. I trust you’ve been debriefed?”

“Yes sir,” Gaila answers. “So I’m guessing this is standard procedure from here on out, right? I mean, besides the spying thing. Beam down, don’t let the locals know you’re aliens, blah blah blah, Prime Directive, right?”

“Where’d you find this one Spock?” he asks (“Betazed,” Spock supplies, but he is fairly certain the question was rhetorical and is subsequently ignored); “Anyway, big difference between this and any other First Contact is that you two aren’t going to meet with the global leaders for any reason at all. Is that understood? We just need you two to collect data and compile it all into a working module. With any luck, we can get an accelerated approval of Federation status to this planet before the year’s over. And we don’t need accusations of a Prime Directive breach marring this whole experiment.”

“Understood,” Spock says, clasping his hands behind his back. “If there is nothing else you need to speak with us about, sir? Sol III is one-point-six weeks away, traveling at warp three. I would like for us to take the spaceship out as soon as possible.”

“What?” Nog says, sounding slightly distracted. His eyes travel around the length of the hangar before they stop to rest slightly to the left of where Spock is standing. “Listen Commander. I’m declaring you acting captain of the Vulcan research vessel _Kla-hil_ in lieu of any officers from the VSA to do it for me. Keep a detailed report of everything you see and do out there, you got it?”

“Yes sir,” he answers, and at that moment Ambassador Sardak moves to stand beside Captain Nog, a placid expression on his face.

“Ambassador Sardak,” Captain Nog chokes. “Your presence here is…unexpected.”

Briefly, the Captain’s eyes dart over Spock nervously before settling onto Sardak again, which Spock can understand. The Ambassador and himself have not always been in amicable relations over the course of their lives. Spock had been admitted into the Vulcan Science Academy over his own son, Stonn, and when Spock transferred out, Sardak had considered it a slight to Stonn as well as Vulcan.

“Unexpected, perhaps,” Sardak concedes. “Yet not entirely surprising. If I may have a moment of your time, Captain?”

Sardak moves away from them before Captain Nog has a chance to answer, suggesting that he has every intention of being heard out. As he trails after the Ambassador, Nog turns to them quickly and raises his eyebrows significantly, tilting his head towards the _Kla-hil_ as he goes. Spock raises an eyebrow of his own and remains where he is.

After a moment of silence, Gaila snorts quietly.

“It’s actually pretty funny that an old Vulcan dude can stop a seasoned Starfleet Captain dead in his tracks with nothing more than a bored expression,” she comments aloud.

“Indeed,” Spock answers tersely. He watches the way Nog’s arms wave emphatically in a seemingly intense debate, how his eyes dart around in agitation. He makes a decision. “We should depart.”

“Really?” she asks, turning to watch the exchange for herself. She motions vaguely with her arm. “Seems like that could be important.”

“If it is relevant to our current mission, then Captain Nog will send us a message en route to Sol III,” he assures her.

“You sure about that? Isn’t that guy, like, the head of the Council or something?”

“It is irrelevant,” Spock answers. “And therefore, I have no comment on the matter. We should depart.”

And indeed, it is not at all relevant to the mission at hand. Commander Gaila spends another full minute watching Nog and Sardak argue, before she shrugs and climbs into the _Kla-hil_. Spock follows her in and together, they prepare the ship for travel.

Twelve hours into their journey, Captain Nog contacts them. The communication is brief, ‘a proper send-off’ for the two of them, as Ambassador Sardak kept Nog from properly wishing them good luck.

“Sardak was dead-set on going with you two,” Nog remarks in an off-handed way. “You two should have seen the look on his face when we were forced out of the hangar for the bay doors to open up for the _Kla-hil_.”

“Why a member of the Vulcan High Council would want to tag along to what basically amounts to a vacation onto a virtually unknown planet?” Gaila asks when Nog at last falls silent.

He sends Spock an almost apologetic shrug before he answers.

“Sardak said it was because he doesn’t trust Spock all too much with ‘Matters of Diplomatic Interest.’ Which I think is a load of crap. I think you’d have made a great Ambassador, Spock,” Nog says hesitantly.

Spock clamps his hands behind his back and avoids the appearance of outrage.

“I see,” Spock says.

However, once Captain Nog has signed off, he cannot help but think Sardak had alternate reasons for wanting to be a part of this mission. He cannot possibly know what those reasons may be, but he does plan on finding out.

In exactly eleven point four standard days, they reach Sol III, with little complication. The planet may not yet be warp-capable, yet, even initially, there is evidence of a civilization that has no compunction with space travel. Indeed, Spock takes note of the thriving sub colony on the planet’s orbiting satellite. There are many species to date that have the required technology to engage in warp-travel, yet lack sufficient curiosity to look to the stars. Spock is inordinately pleased that, for this planet, this is not so.

First, they scan the planet for oxygen levels, viable water, and median temperature, as they would any other. Spock is surprised to note that while the median planet temperature is quite cool compared to most other Federation planets, there is much variety in the temperature, sometimes with a hot, arid climate occurring less than 100 kilometers from a wet, tropical one. Spock attributes this to the strange tilt to the planet’s axis.

When Spock mentions this to the commander, she smiles brightly from her spot at the helm and continues to navigate them at a safe distance from both the planet and its satellite. Neither of them is eager to be detected.

“Just wait ’til you’re down on planet, Captain,” she says. “If I can speak freely sir, it’s pretty amazing down there.”

Spock raises an eyebrow at her vehemence.

“Indeed,” he says, and records the readings onto his PADD.

After a brief discussion with Gaila, it is agreed that the ship is to be left in stasis, in matching orbit around the satellite as half of its face seems to be eternally in shadow, facing away from the sun. Spock has trepidations with leaving the ship alone, but Commander Gaila is adamant on her inclusion in the landing party. Spock eventually agrees; it would be illogical for the Commander to be left aboard the ship after they have taken their initial readings, as he had contacted Gaila specifically because she has had previous experience on the planet itself. It will create a massive complication for them once they are ready to reboard the ship, yet even this fact does not stop the illogical relief Spock feels from coursing through him at the thought that he will not have to carry out his mission alone.

They beam onto a remote stretch of beach sometime late at night, the full moon bathing the sand and surrounding ocean in an unnatural glow.

“Come on, Commander,” Gaila whispers into the night and runs off into the darkness, her suitcase trailing after her.

Spock follows her at a more sedate speed, looking for an establishment where they might acquire funds, still open late at night. Less than fifteen minutes later, Gaila finds him again and hands him a thin, black rectangular prism.

“What is this?” Spock asks, flipping the small device over in his hands; there is a thin magnetic stripe running across the top, and below that is a tiny microchip.

“I’m assuming it’s a form of currency” she tells him. “I’m betting it’s some form of credit.”

Spock would very much like to examine this object fully, but most credit chips have built-in security devices. He does not want to be responsible for their early capture should this be the case.

“Where did you acquire this?” Spock asks when he can find nothing else to say.

“Interesting fact,” Gaila says, evading Spock’s query entirely. “This species is severely affected by Orion pheromones. I’ll have to double my dose of pheromone suppressants to be able to do anything around here.”

“And how did you glean this knowledge, Commander?”

She rolls her eyes at Spock, stuffing the currency bar into her bag before starting off again.

“Nice to know there are seedy individuals anywhere you go,” she adds over her shoulder.

She glances back at Spock, and something of his disapproval must show on his face, because the smile slips off the Commander’s face and she slows to match his pace.

“Don’t worry though, Captain,” she says. “It’s not like I actually partook in some nefarious sexual encounter with the guy. I stunned him before he knew what hit him. Also, I learned a new phrase.”

“Oh?” Spock asks. “Will it be enough for us to calibrate the language into a universal translator?”

“I don’t think so,” she says, frowning. “The phrase was ‘how much?’ Some things, after all, are universal.”

“I see,” Spock answers.

After a while, they come across a large building Spock is fairly certain could be used for travelers to acquire temporary accommodations. Spock pulls out his Universal Translator and sets it recording before they enter and approach the only being, a large, rather bored looking male, reading something on a large square console.

“How much?” Gaila asks in that foreign language, and the man doesn’t look up from his screen, merely pushes a few buttons and answers her in that same language.

Spock finds that he can appreciate the lightness of this language, very different from the guttural sound of Vulcan and Orion; he might even admit to himself that the language has a small amount of musicality to it.

There is a small scanner attached to the desk; when the alien finishes speaking, a small amount of characters appears on the screen. Spock guesses those characters are numbers, and when Gaila passes the strange device over the screen, it flashes a dim blue light twice and goes dark. The being hands them a plastic card and points in a vague direction. Gaila smiles at Spock in triumph and leads him down a hallway. The characters on the card match ones nailed to a door, thankfully on the first floor, and once they are settled, they spend the rest of the night calibrating the Universal Translator, so they might learn the language faster.

The next morning they find themselves in a city come to life with activity. Very early on, members of the species begin their commute to and from places unknown, and Spock cannot deny that he shares Gaila’s increasing excitement as they decide to venture out—Spock only allows this as they have made great strides in calibrating the Universal Translator; they can now roughly understand the native language around them, and can approximate an appropriate response for the Commander and himself.

Very quickly, he loses the Commander in the ensuing crowd. Admittedly, Spock does not notice this immediately, as he is so focused on the life around him that he gives little thought to conversation. However, she finds him again, ushering him into a shop that holds very little in the way of actual merchandise.

“Wait here for me,” she says before stepping into the back with one of the natives.

“You all right sweetie?” what appears to be the shopkeeper asks him, peering at him from behind a counter. “You look a touch green.”

“I am functional,” Spock answers slowly, confident that the answer is neutral enough to not warrant further inquiry.

“You sure hon?” she asks. “You didn’t have the egg and chorizo breakfast platter down the street now, did you? I heard that place has rats. And cockroaches.”

Spock makes a mental note to look those animals up once they have hacked the wireless servers that his tricorder had detected. At that moment, however, Gaila comes out of the back room, clad in only her undergarments and a towel, looking decidedly orange.

“I do not believe that is the most productive use of our resources, Commander,” Spock tells her quietly in Vulcan while the shopkeeper tries to stifle her giggles.

“It’s very orange,” Gaila agrees. “But. It’s more natural-looking than the green.”

Commander Gaila makes a valid observation. However, she is quite orange. Spock doubts that shade of fluorescent orange would make them less conspicuous.

“Orange is not a natural skin pigmentation for this species,” he finally settles on.

She only smiles.

“That’s the beauty of it, though, Spock,” she says, pulling on a thin cotton blouse as she speaks. Spock pointedly looks away. “I was talking to this terran female who was this exact same shade of orange, and she was very put out about spending too much time in the tanning booth, but said that it’s the price she pays for beauty.”

Spock raises an eyebrow dubiously, fingers the edge of the black day-hat the Commander purchased for him once she’d found him, thinking.

“You spoke with a terran female,” he repeats. “And she did not mention anything strange about your appearance?”

“Not the point,” she says with a role of her eyes. “And I think it’s sort of taboo here, to mention the color of someone’s skin. I think we should put that on the To-Research List. But the point is that now, I just look like I’m vain, not diseased! Isn’t that perfect?”

Spock finds he has no answer for her. Instead, he drops his hat sedately onto his head and pulls at the hem of his black, Starfleet-issued undershirt—he is grateful that the fashion of this people is relatively similar to that of Starfleet in general; he did not want to waste unnecessary funds on the purchase of new clothing. The Commander pulls up her pants at that, handing the towel back to a worker and swiping their credit bar along what Spock can only call the payment terminal.

“Kay, let’s go,” she says, popping her universal translator back into her ear. “I’m still having a little trouble sorting through the past imperfect conjugation of this weird language. Honestly, I’m not a communications officer! I didn’t sign on to learn a new language in two weeks.”

“Indeed,” Spock replies, clasping his hands behind his back

Spock is very quick to learn new languages. However, if he had wanted to become a communications officer, he would be a communications officer. Instead of mentioning this, however, he follows his subordinate out of the shop, only half-listening to her as she goes on about wanting to sample the local nightlife once they have a firmer grasp on the language.


	3. This Place at the Crossroads (2/5)

  
  
   
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[](http://alpha-hydra.livejournal.com/tag/tp%40xrds)

It’s official now: he’s obsessed. Pike emailed him three days ago telling him as much, specifically saying that he’s concerned for Jim’s sanity and general well-being. Then again, Pike’s been talking with Bones a lot, and his default mode is ‘concerned for Jim’s sanity-slash-well-being.’ He’s pretty sure that Pike had thought Jim would forget about all of it after the first few weeks, but after three months, Jim’s a little more willing to agree with Bones when he says Jim’s lost his damn mind.

He knew going in that building up a warp core from scratch would take time, but he wasn’t exactly prepared for all the nothing that would be happening after they figured out the theory. He’s fought with every single member of his engineering team at this point, over everything from antimatter stabilizers to the mechanical schematics of the core design. Even Scotty’s pretty annoyed with him at this point; when they went starship shopping, Scotty had insisted on taking the oldest ship they could find and rebuilding it from the bottom up. Jim was (still is) of the opinion that they should have gotten the state-of-the-art _Endeavor_ , since it’s rumored to be the fastest ship this side of the equator. In the end, they had settled on the average _Icarus_ , which was lightweight and quick but only a couple of years out of date.

He’s pretty sick of arguing at this point.

“That’s it,” Bones declares one night, dropping his hand roughly onto Jim’s shoulder. When Jim looks up from his console, he can see that dangerously manic glint in his friend’s eyes. “We’re going out.”

“What? Bones, come on,” he says, giving him the Puppy-Dog Eyes of Acquiescence. Bones’ scowl just deepens. “Can’t I just—”

“Nope.” Bones pulls him up by the arm and manhandles him to the door. “You know how long it’s been since you left this room, Jim?”

“Just this afternoon. I was at—”

“I know damn well where you were,” he snaps.

Bones lets go of him only long enough to throw Jim’s leather jacket at him.

“So why do you ask?”

“You know what I mean, kid. This bullshit is going to drive you crazy.”

“It’s not bullshit,” he answers petulantly.

Bones give him a look that tells him in no uncertain terms that he’s got no faith in Jim’s equations.

“How often have you heard the phrase ‘you can’t go faster than the speed of light’?” Bones asks.

“Bones, we’ve been through this,” Jim answers, and they have. When Jim first had that bizarre idea of surfing across the galaxy, he’d used Bones as a sounding board. But, as Bones was eager to point out, he’s a doctor, not a physicist, and all he knew of physics was that objects can’t move faster than the speed of light. “The speed of separation, the acceleration that sounds an awful lot like ‘faster than the speed of light,’ comes from the expansion of spacetime, not from the speed of the object in question.”

“And I’ve told you, I don’t know what that means,” Bones shoots back.

“Spacetime is an illusion Bones!” Jim says excitedly. “Look, let me draw you up the program again—”

“Hell no,” Bones says, crossing his arms. “I told you; we’re going out. Now just march yourself out that door before I stick you with another antibiotic.”

“You’re a horrible best friend Bones,” Jim whines, but he’s already scrambling for his keys and pulling on his jacket. So maybe his point is getting lost somewhere in there.

Bones rolls his eyes, grumbles something about patience and being a doctor, not a saint, and slams the door behind him.

After about an hour, Jim starts thinking that maybe this is exactly what he needed. Bones invited his entire Engineering team anyway and banned the group from talking about space for the entire night, so that might just make Bones the Best Friend Ever. Also, he buys the first two rounds of shots for the six of them.

They go to a club, which surprises Jim at first, since Bones is more the type of person who sits in a dark corner of a bar and drinks until the barkeep cuts him off. But apparently, this is Rand’s favorite joint, and Jim’s actually kind of touched that Bones would go to all this trouble for him.

“Don’t start with that emotional bullshit,” Bones warns when he tries to say thanks. “We both know you’re not that kind of drunk.”

So Jim shrugs, takes another swig of his drink, and somehow manages to convince both Rand and Ortiz onto the dance floor with him and tries not to think about the blueprints waiting for him on his computer at home. He’s really enjoying himself, and after about half an hour they head back to the table, where Bones and Scotty are talking, nearly shouting to be heard over the heavy bass surrounding them.

“So then, she tries to convince me that she had no idea how it possibly could have gotten stuck up there, of all places, and could I please just pull it out or something? Because, get this, she was getting a damn call!”

Scotty bangs on the table and howls with laughter as the girls take their seats. Jim motions to a pretty waitress with bright blue hair for another round, she winks at him and saunters off.

“Where’s Uhura?” he calls to no one in particular.

“Out on the dance floor,” Scotty shouts back, motioning vaguely while he takes another sip.

Jim frowns, or well, he does his best approximation of a frown with three jello-shots and two beers clouding his system.

“And that doesn’t bother you?” he answers. “Aren’t you guys like, together?”

“Aye,” Scotty says. “But I’m not nearly sloshed enough to go out and join her yet, am I? I say let her have fun. In a few rounds, she’ll be right embarrassed by me.”

Scotty looks away from his drink for a split second. Jim sees the moment when he spots Uhura, how the manic expression on his face softens to something approximating a human smile, and Jim kind of gets it then. He hums in response and searches the dance floor for the slinky purple dress Uhura was wearing.

When he finally spots her, she’s speaking with a tall redhead in a short, shiny black dress. She’s got bright red hair and a tacky sort of orange-bottle tan going on that doesn’t actually stop her from looking like sex on legs. She motions excitedly to someone in the corner, and the guy who emerges from the crowd, well.

Jim kind of forgets how to breathe when he catches sight of him.

The strobe lights take that moment to start flashing, so Jim can’t make anything out except for his height from this far away, and the strobes make them all look like they’re in a stop-motion film, disjointed and unreal. Bones catches him staring, but he only rolls his eyes in a way Jim’s come to expect from the doctor and goes back to laughing with Rand, Ortiz and Scotty.

It’s kind of funny, how Jim gets this tunnel vision when the three of them start winding their way through the crowd. Uhura’s gorgeous almost beyond words, and the redhead, Miss Bottle-Tan, she’s stopping conversations as they saunter by, but Jim’s watching the way her friend’s eyes glitter with an almost ethereal glow, how his skin’s so pale it almost looks sickly green in the dimness of the club, the way his sleek sports coat hugs his slender waist.

They’re within shouting distance now, and when Scotty calls the group over, the guy’s eyes lock onto Jim and study him with a fierce intensity. He doesn’t seem to need to blink, and Jim has a moment where he thinks that that would be kind of unnerving if the guy wasn’t so damn _hot_ , before the three of them are at their table and Uhura is introducing them.

“This is Gaila and Spock,” she calls out over the music. “They’re new in town.”

The five of them wave politely, and Jim dies of happiness a little bit when Drop-Dead-Gorgeous—Spock, he guesses, sits down next to him without fanfare.

“So wait, you’ve actually met someone from Europa?” Gaila shouts over to Uhura. Uhura nods; Jim gets the impression that this is a continuing conversation.

“Nyota here helped build the translation nodules, didn’t she?” Scotty calls out, motioning wildly with his empty glass. “Figured out how to encode the language to be understandable in Earth’s atmosphere.”

Jim turns to Spock and leans in just a tiny bit to speak to him.

“My name’s Jim,” he supplies helpfully.

“Hello,” he answers, nodding his head once.

“I’m guessing your name is Spock, then?”

He furrows his brow slightly at that, head tilting to the side as if he doesn’t actually understand.

“You are guessing,” he agrees. “If you are inquiring as to whether your guess is correct, then my answer is that it is.”

“Okay,” Jim says, willing to leave the weirdness of that comment alone. “How long have you been in town?”

Spock’s eyebrows are really cool from a profile look. Jim wonders if he shapes them to look like that, or if they’re just naturally upswept. After a second, he turns his full attention to Jim, and it feels suddenly like he’s the only guy on the planet.

It occurs to Jim that Spock may be a very bad idea, if that’s the only thing he can think of at the moment.

“Approximately forty one point six days,” he answers.

“Approximately, huh?” Jim repeats with a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “And how do you like it so far?”

Spock clasps his hands together in a way that reminds Jim more of a super villain than a man sitting in a club.

“It has been very enlightening,” Spock finally says. “There is much I have learned.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

Spock pauses again, considering. Jim thinks it’s really cute how Spock can apply the same sort of intense deliberation Jim only ever sees in the lab onto some harmless flirting.

“The capricious effects of alcohol upon the human body, for one,” he answers, perfect deadpan, and Jim can’t help but laugh.

“I get it; you don’t go out drinking often.”

“When I am thirsty, I will drink,” Spock says like it’s a completely normal thing to say. “Oftentimes I am able to procure adequate hydration without ‘going out,’ as you put it.”

Jim can’t help it; he laughs.

“Totally not what I meant, but good to know either way.”

“I see,” Spock answers, quirking an eyebrow in a way that really shouldn’t be that sexy. “Fascinating.”

“Ok, look,” Jim says after a beat of silence, making sure he’s got on his most charming grin. “I can tell you don’t belong here.”

Spock’s other eyebrow inches up towards his fedora, and a shadow of some nameless emotion shimmers behind his dark eyes. Jim wonders how long it’ll take him to decode all of this man’s expressions.

“Is that so?”

“Yup,” he answers proudly. “Not really your thing, is it? The club scene, I mean. So, if I were to ask you to someplace quieter, like the tea shop down the street that stays open ’til four AM, would you actually accompany me?”

Spock blinks once at him, slowly, and Jim gets the feeling that that’s more of an admission on Spock than it would be on anyone else.

“I believe that would be acceptable.”

Jim beams.

Which is how he ends up spending the rest of his night sitting across from Spock in a dimly lit booth, talking. Which is different, to say the least. But nice.

The dim light in a trendy tea shop, however, is pretty different from the dim light in any club, and so the second they sit down, Jim’s eyes are raking over Spock in obvious intent. Spock looks neither discomforted nor flattered, so Jim takes that as permission to look as he pleases. What really catch Jim’s attention are his eyes. Earlier, Jim had noticed that they were pretty intense in the dark, and with more light Jim can see that they’re a really dark brown, almost black, with a ring of brownish gold surrounding the iris. His pupils are unnaturally dilated too; Jim wonders if he’s high as a kite right now or if he might just be having difficulty getting his eyes used to the light.

Also, Jim may be in love with Spock’s hands, a little bit. They have really long, elegant fingers, and the pads of each fingertip looks stained a pale green. Jim thinks he may be a painter or something.

When they get to talking, Jim finds out that Spock is resolutely Not From Here, which Jim takes to mean he’s left some unpleasantness behind that he’d rather not remember, and Jim’s fine with that. He left Iowa in the dead of night, done with that life and everyone in it; he doesn’t need an explanation. He gets the need to not-talk-about-it, and tells Spock as much. Spock looks almost relieved at that, which Jim can sort of understand too.

He’s also not dating Gaila, which is pretty awesome.

They spend the whole night talking, something Jim’s not done since…since he can’t remember when, actually. And when he charms Spock into walking him home—like every cheesy romance movie ever made—Jim gets this really weird rush from grabbing Spock’s hand and twining their fingers together at three o’clock in the morning. Maybe it’s the way Spock nearly stops dead in his tracks at the gesture, before he clears his throat and resumes his pace, like it’s a really big deal.

Maybe to Spock, it is.

“So, this is me,” Jim says reluctantly.

Spock raises an eyebrow; Jim thinks he’s probably doing that thing where he takes Jim’s statements literally. English is probably not his first language, but Jim can’t hear any kind of accent in his voice. It’s only one of the many quirks Jim’s already discovered about this man. Is it weird that he wants to find them all out? The only light around them comes from the windows to Jim’s building, the moon obscured by dark, ominous clouds, and even with Spock’s face half-hidden in shadow, Jim thinks he looks amazing.

“My place,” he adds, and Spock nods at that.

“I see.”

He looks down at their hands quickly, with what looks like the beginnings of a blush darkening the skin of his neck. Jim smiles, tugs Spock closer and plants a quick, chaste kiss onto his lips.

“Email me sometime,” he whispers into the air separating them.

He feels rather than sees Spock nod, and when he finally pulls away and goes inside, he casts a quick glance back. Spock is watching him intently, his right hand curled close to his chest, both his eyebrows close to his hairline in poorly masked disbelief.

Bones is mad that he ditched the party to hang out with his next quick lay, and when Jim just shrugs and says, “He’s got a name, you know. Spock,” Bones looks like he might actually have seen a ghost.

“Bullshit,” Bones says. “Who are you and what has that hat-wearing maniac done with Jim Kirk?”

“Seriously Bones? Can’t I go out for a late night cup of coffee with someone—” amazing, mysterious, sexy as all fuck? “—I’ve only just met?”

Bones makes a face that says more than his words ever could (he guesses it’s something along the lines of ‘you’re a drunken moron Jim, and how you’ve managed to get this far in life without contracting an STD is beyond me.’). Jim laughs and decides that he doesn’t really care what Bones thinks has polluted his brain. His phone informs him that he’s got an email, and there’s only one person it could be from.

 _Tonight was a pleasing excursion. I had fun._

-Spock

Jim’s got a sappy smile on his face for days.

  


****

  
Spock has hit an unknown variable in his research by the name of James Tiberius Kirk—known colloquially as ‘Jim’. He does not know what, precisely possessed him to accept the man’s initial offer two weeks previous; at the time Spock would have said that he was simply gathering more data on the social customs of these beings (they call themselves ‘humans’ or, alternatively, ‘people’). Given time to meditate, however, Spock knows that data collection was not his only motivation for such an endeavor.

He had allowed the human to take his hand on the walk back to Jim’s place of habitation, an action initially allowed because he was unsure if it would offend the man should he refuse to comply. This is what he tells himself. Spock has offended on more than one occasion because he would not sacrifice his own customs to diplomacy; therefore, logically, his concern had been offending Jim specifically, and not on causing offence in general.

Likewise, there is no reason why he should have sent a message to the man after his return to his and Commander Gaila’s ‘motel room,’ that same night. By all accounts, that single night should have been the end of their encounter. And yet, Spock has indulged in his empathetic, Betazoid half and opened up a line of communication, thereby ensuring a subsequent meeting.

Spock is behaving illogically. The memory of the press of Jim’s lips against his own, soft and moist in a way no Vulcan’s could be, intimate in a different way than the seductive press of their hands, is evidence of this. If he is not careful, Spock may need to be stripped of his command for violating the Prime Directive.

He has just returned from what Jim referred to as a ‘picnic,’ where Jim spoke mainly of his current project: namely, his attempts to build a machine that would create a warp drive. His eyes had shone brightly with his anxiety and frustration, and Spock found himself very close to writing out the necessary steps he would need to take to work through his problem. It was then that Spock had feigned fatigue and had chosen to walk the streets of San Francisco, as the city was called, trying to regain his control.

“You’ve been out with that human male again, haven’t you?” Commander Gaila asks when he finally stumbles back to the room, three hours after sunset. “You reek of his sweat and testosterone.”

Orions have a particularly keen sense of smell, Spock reminds himself as he shrugs out of his coat slowly. It is natural for the Commander to smell Jim on him, even if Spock himself cannot.

Commander Gaila is lying on her stomach on her bed, fingers hovering over the keys on her PADD. Her eyes are dark with something that looks very much like suspicion.

“How much have you found out about Europa?” he asks instead, unwilling, for the moment, to speak of it.

She bites her lip, and keys in a code that most probably brings up her supplemental report on the planet.

“A lot actually,” she answers. “It’s a satellite orbiting Sol V, known colloquially as Jupiter. It’s covered in ice, and its technologically advanced inhabitants have evolved underwater, closest to the core of the satellite. I’ve sent the entire report directly to your personal inbox.”

Spock nods his approval to this and clasps his hands behind his back. He has not had very much time to properly research ‘Europa,’ as most of his attention is currently focused on a certain human male. The most Spock knows is what he has overheard others say of the place. Europa has sapient life as well, from what Spock has been able to gather. Earth has made contact with its people and offers nothing but peace, a promising sign for a future member of the Federation.

“What are the possible negative effects of Sol III’s trade agreement with this civilization?” he asks.

“Earth,” she stresses, “is nearly obsessed with the ideas of peace and sustainability. Its technology has experienced unprecedented growth over the last two decades specifically because of the Europians. It’s also noteworthy to mention that the Earth humans are in a mutually benefitting treaty with Europa; they aren’t exploiting Europa’s less evolved cultures and value peace above all else. I think Earth would make an excellent addition to the Federation.”

“Have you mentioned this in your report?”

“Yeah, I have.”

“And do you believe Europa, a satellite which is technologically outmatched by Earth, to be a suitable addition to the Federation as well?” Spock asks. He believes so, but is curious whether the Commander will think so as well. “Surely Earth will not join without the admittance of its neighboring planet.”

“Yes, I do,” Gaila answers back. Her tone suggests that she is angry, although Spock cannot understand why. When she speaks again, her tone is biting, defensive. “There are precedents for non-warp capable civilizations joining the Federation, a number of which include Ceti Alpha Eridanii, Taurus XI, T’Khut—”

“I too, agree with your sentiment, Commander,” Spock answers, hoping to placate her. “However, I do not believe the Federation will see it in much the same manner.”

“Yeah, I know,” she says, frustrated. “Earth is farther away from warp-capability than we would have hoped.”

Spock blinks at that, and looks away. Jim’s voice rings clear in his ears at that: _If I can just figure out how to power that fucking engine, we’d have a warp drive in less than a month._

“They may be closer to such a goal than we have previously anticipated.”

Gaila puts down her PADD and watches Spock intently; Spock endeavors to look innocent.

“It’s that guy you’ve been seeing,” she guesses in an astonishing leap of logic. “You’re not subtle around him, Commander. You can’t hide behind impartial observation when you’re actively engaging the specimen.”

“His name is Jim,” Spock answers when he can think of nothing else to say.

From the look on his Commander’s face, however, it may have been the wrong thing to say. Very slowly, she stands, fusses with the hem of her short shirt before fixing Spock with a strangely gentle expression.

“Spock. Commander, Captain,” she starts. “If this human male is really on the brink of discovering the warp drive, you’ve got to let him be. You can’t—”

“I am aware of what I can and cannot do, Commander Gaila,” he answers sharply. “I am not in violation of the Prime Directive, nor do I plan on violating it anytime in the foreseeable future.” He pauses here, considering. “I find that I enjoy his company. He is an interesting example of humanity, and I would like to expand my notes on human behavior.”

“Oh, I see,” Gaila says, crossing her arms. “So you want to fuck him?”

The phrase gives Spock pause. He can honestly say that the notion has never crossed his mind; however, most species are sexual in nature. It is not illogical to assume that Jim, perhaps, has been entertaining similar thoughts.

“Spock,” she says, gently this time, placating. For some reason, it sparks a very real well of irritation in him. “This is a bad idea. You know this is a bad idea. What are you going to do when he builds that spaceship then? Think the Federation’s not gonna ask what the hell you’re doing on board with them? They’ll accuse you of fucking with the Prime Directive, and it’s not like the Vulcan High Council is part of your fan club right now. You can’t get involved like this.”

“I will not allow you to lecture me on the importance of remaining emotionally unattached, Lieutenant Commander,” Spock answers in as calm a voice as he can muster.

Without another thought, he turns on his heel and heads out the door again, letting the ambient temperature calm the irritation rising hot and sharp into his throat.

****

Pavel Chekov is a strange kid. Jim's heard through the university grapevine about the Russian Whiz Kid, who showed up one day two years ago with almost no secondary education and nearly broke the testing center when he took his aptitude tests. According to the gossip, he didn't know a word of English and learned within his first week of school.

The rumor mills are never really accurate, but apparently, they're not very far off where this 'Chekov' kid is concerned. He's very proud to be turning 17 next month, and he's one of the University's brightest students. So, it kind of makes sense that when Jim and his team—and seriously, he doesn't think it will ever stop sounding cool in his head; he's got a god damn _Engineering Team_ —stall at yet another insurmountable road block a few weeks later, that he sends the kid an email to see if he'll have lunch.

He responds almost immediately to Jim's message, which Jim thinks is kind of strange until he remembers that the kid is 17. He probably lives on the internet (this makes Jim inordinately sad for a moment, because he remembers being 17 and living on simulated servers for his RPGs and social networking sites, and when did he become so old?)

He takes Chekov to a trendy little coffee shop hidden behind a large Martial Arts center and a bar—he would have taken Chekov there but 1) seventeen, so yeah, illegal, and 2) he really doesn't want the kid to think some doctorate is taking him on a date. Plus, he knows the owner of this little place, and if she's not too pissed at him that week, she'll let him sneak a few free cups of coffee.

So they meet up for lunch and end up spending almost the entire afternoon talking about the problems with current aeronautics and jet propulsion.

"It is wery interesting," Chekov says over his cup of now cold coffee. "I have read your report on interstellar travel."

"Yeah?" Jim asks, as he motions Mary Anne to bring another round. She rolls her eyes and sends a waitress his way. "I've actually been looking for a way to translate that theory into real life applications."

Chekov smiles at him from behind his new cup.

"It should be wery simple," he says, a little like Jim's slow.

If Chekov wasn’t 17 and looking at him like a puppy, he might have punched the kid in the face. Jim thinks a lot of people have had the same thought about Chekov before; he seems like the type who could get away with a lot of shit because he’s got some seriously wide eyes and a dangerously friendly smile.

"Well, yeah. But there are a few problems. We’re having trouble designing an upgrade without knowing exactly what would power the engine, for one. There’s the mess of coding in our starship that clashes with the preliminary engine’s coding, and in field tests we’ve noticed that the antimatter propulsion doesn’t behave the way it does in our sims; Rand thinks it’s a glitch in our simulators and Ortiz thinks it’s just a problem with mixing antimatter and dark matter. And don’t get me started on the Entropy Problem."

The Entropy Problem, Jim thinks to himself, or how to create an area of space as unstable as a black hole without ripping the universe apart; so annoying it became a proper noun.

"Ah," is Chekov's answer to that.

Jim thinks it’s a little hilarious, that Chekov manages to make Jim’s three-month long turmoil sound like an improperly arranged logarithm. Pavel frowns and sets down his cup, pulling a napkin towards himself and procuring a pen from...somewhere. He starts scribbling lightly, moving his lips as he crosses things out. Jim leans forward slightly and sees a bunch of symbols and numbers neatly arranging themselves onto the napkin in familiar patterns.

"I see your problem, Mr. Kirk," Chekov says after a while. "It is more difficult than it should be."

"First, wow, don't call me 'Mr. Kirk’; and second that's what I thought!" Jim says, sitting up in his seat and flailing a little. "And Scotty was all 'Aye mate, but look! Lithium!' Can you believe he brought Lithium into the house? He could have killed us with radiation poisoning!"

Which, okay, not really; it was stored within proper safety protocol, and it’s not like any one of them had other volatile chemicals which could have started a chemical reaction. However, it’s the thought that counts, really. Chekov frowns down at his little paper, looking content to let Kirk ramble. When he looks up again, his eyes are huge with what looks like disbelief.

"Scotty?" he repeats. "Not Mr. Montgomery Scott?"

"Yeah. You know him?"

Chekov sneaks a look down at his napkin and beams broadly.

"Mr. Scott is my particle physics instructor. I like him wery much."

"Well, it's a small world then, isn't it?" Jim says, leaning back into his seat and lacing his fingers behind his neck.

"Yes, it is."

There's a lull in the conversation then, as Jim drinks his coffee and Chekov continues to scribble on his napkin. Jim's about to ask him if he's gotten anything when a guy comes up to their table and clears his throat hesitantly. Chekov looks up from his napkin and beams.

"Hikaru!" he says brightly. "You are not normally on this side of town! How are you?"

'Hikaru' smiles warmly at Chekov before turning to Jim and scowling darkly.

"I was just in the neighborhood, Pavel," he explains. "Who's your friend?"

Chekov motions to Jim excitedly; Jim smirks at the guy in a way that’s both started and ended multiple bar fights

"This is Mr. Kirk—Jim, Hikaru," he says. "Remember I told you about warp trawel? He is...he is who has written article on it. Mr. Kirk, this is Hikaru Sulu; we are friends."

"Sulu," Jim acknowledges with a nod. Sulu nods sharply in return.

"We were just talking about new energy sources," Jim says, hoping it sounds enough like _Not a Date_ to get that ugly, pinched look off Sulu's face.

"Yeah?" Sulu says, looking down at Chekov's neatly destroyed napkin and the mess of half-finished coffee cups surrounding them. Lying forgotten in the farthest corner of their table is Jim's barely-touched chicken sandwich. "Mind if I join you then?"

"We would love it, Hikaru," Chekov says happily, scooting his chair so Sulu can pull one from one of the other tables and invade their lunch.

Chekov starts mumbling to himself in Russian, just under his breath, and that's when Jim figures he's lost the kid. He turns to Sulu, who looks a little less suspicious of Jim now.

"So," Jim says, motioning with his left hand vaguely. "How do you know Chekov?"

"My dad is the head of the Applied Mechanics Department," Sulu says, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. "So I was at a lot of those weird 'rising star' ceremonies the department sponsors. And Pavel was only 15 when he was admitted to the University, so I figured he'd probably want to talk to someone who wasn't. You know." He shrugs. "Old."

Jim nods in understanding; he remembers those department-wide parties, the way the University of Astrophysics would parade around its newest genius like some sort of prize animal, while the guys from Berkeley, MIT, and Cambridge sat around and tried to look like they weren’t intimidated. He remembers when Pike dragged him to his own Rising Star thing; it was bullshit. Then again, that was like, seven years ago; he was a lot angrier and rougher around the edges back then. He could see how, for a teenager, it would have been torture.

“Friends, huh?” Jim asks kind of skeptically.

He doesn’t miss the way Sulu sends an almost wistful smile to Chekov’s bent head.

“Yeah,” he says quietly.

“So what do you do?”

“I’m a pilot,” Sulu says.

“No way,” Jim says, sitting up in his seat. “Like, you’re licensed to fly a starship or you fly around your daddy’s hovercar for fun?”

Sulu scowls at him.

“I’m a licensed professional,” he says indignantly.

It’s at that moment when Chekov’s head snaps up, his eyes shining with something that Jim can already identify: understanding.

“You said you had Lithium,” he says, grabbing another napkin and handing his used one to Sulu distractedly. “Perhaps,” he mumbles to himself when Jim nods in agreement, already writing frantically across his napkin.

Jim imagines what Chekov would have been like if he had been left to rot in Russia somewhere, and is really grateful to random strokes of luck when he looks up from his napkin proudly.

“What you need,” he whispers, like he’s imparting onto them the meaning of life. “Is something new.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“No, you do not understand,” he points to his napkin, at the equations written there in smudged black ink. “Lithium is too stable. Will not charge your core for long enough. But look, if its properties were maybe altered—”

“Hold on, kid,” Jim says, holding up his hands in an instant rejection. “What the hell do you mean, altered?”

“You want to create a new element, Pavel?” Sulu says.

And ok. So none of his team had thought of that, probably because they don’t live in a low budget sci-fi film.

“You can’t just create a new element,” Jim dismisses, picking up Chekov’s napkin and studying it intently. “A relatively unstable compound, maybe,” he adds, because that was pretty brilliant, what Chekov did right there with the trioxide. “This isn’t powerful enough to create the warp bubble though.”

“But it would be enough to keep the bubble stable,” Chekov answers quickly, reaching for the napkin again. Jim holds it out of reach, his mind whirring.

“Maybe,” he says quietly. “This is good though. If conditions were just a little more unstable than this, like if—holy shit, Chekov,” Jim breathes.

It’s like a light bulb goes off in his mind suddenly. He pulls out his wallet and swipes his credit bar along the automatic sensor on their table, before he jumps out of his seat and bolts out the door. He needs to venture into the realm of science fiction again, because that might just be their answer.

He rushes through the city with no idea where he is, only with the thought of where he needs to be and the thought that, hey, he’s not there yet. When he gets back to the apartment, Bones is heading out; he calls to Jim, but Jim barely even hears him.

“Have you seen my PADD?” he asks without slowing down. “Or that laptop Scotty leant me? I need to figure something out.”

Bones says something then, but Jim’s really not paying attention. He just really needs to figure this out. At this point he doesn’t even care if he’s obsessed. It’s not like he can go over to Scotty’s right now anyway, so Jim thinks at this point his obsession doesn’t even count. His Engineering team told him that they’re doing all they can at Scotty’s place and that maybe if Jim had a little space, he’d think of something. Which he actually knows is just code for _we’re sick of you hanging around being upset; why don’t you go get drunk so you can actually be bearable?_ But whatever. In a fit of impatience he grabs a pen and a pad of paper, and starts writing.

Bones leaves in a huff later that night—22:00, Jim remembers because that’s when he gets it. When he’s done here, he’s gonna beg that little Whiz Kid to be on his team, but right now, he just needs to write it all down.

But he’s already run out of paper, and he can’t find his…well, anything really. He thinks that maybe this is Bones’ fault; he might remember Bones threatening to hide his PADD if he didn’t go out and get some air, but Jim’s not that concerned right now. Inspiration, genius, whatever’s struck him, and a little something like technology isn’t going to hold him back. So he grabs a purple permanent marker from his desk and starts scribbling on his dull beige bedroom wall.

It’s there; he can see it; _this is actually going to happen_. And before long he’s shut the blinds to his windows because he can’t think with all that damn light, and even later than that his marker runs out of ink, so he tears apart the whole apartment looking for another one. He finds a black one, and starts up again.

The good thing about that black marker, he decides later once he’s run out of wall space, is that he can just write over some purple sections of the wall once he’s scribbled them out as incorrect or innocuous. The diagrams and equations are wreaking havoc along the walls of his room, and even along the imaginary whiteboards in his mind, and Jim’s not entirely sure which ones are reality and which ones are still in his mind.

He loses track of time, of course, and he doesn’t even realize how late it’s gotten until the front door slams open, and Bones’ tired voice is saying “Lights down to 10 percent. Jim, are you here? I thought—My God, man. What have you done to your damn room?”

Jim tries to ignore him, tries to block out the sounds of Bones’ voice and the whirring of his scanner, tries to keep hold of the diagrams dancing across the fields of his vision before they fade away into sanity, but that’s when Bones injects something directly into his jugular. He hisses and jerks his head instinctively away, but already he can feel the medication seeping into his bloodstream. He turns to Bones, tries to focus on the sharp color of his eyes, on the deep frown-lines on his forehead and around his lips. For a second all he sees are numbers.

Then Jim finally, finally snaps out of it. He drops his marker—it’s blue now, and he wonders when exactly he ran out of ink again—but Bones is hovering over him again, mumbling and checking his pulse with his portable medical scanner. Jim closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and counts backwards from ten.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Bones asks, scowling deeply at his readings. “I thought you said your episodes were under control!”

“They were,” Jim says slowly, reminding himself to breathe lest he start to hyperventilate. He runs a hand through his hair in frustration. “They are. It’s just. There was Chekov, and his napkin, and this project—”

“Is gonna wind up putting you in the nut-house,” Bones finishes for him.

Jim assures himself that Bones sounds more furious the more worried he actually is as he leads Jim gently to the small, lumpy couch in the living room. Jim collapses onto it and keeps breathing. He very deliberately avoids looking into his room, where he knows piles of numbers and symbols and drawings will taunt him with their brilliance.

“I’m not crazy,” Jim mumbles, even as he scrubs at his face with his palms.

Bones drops a hand on his shoulder; Jim tries to look up from where he’s studying his feet—he’d been wearing shoes, what happened to them? He has the irrational fear that when he looks up, Bones will be nothing more than the pile of equations that keeps him grounded on the earth, the formulas for his hair growth and his aging and the acceleration and deceleration of his breathing as he inhales and exhales. But Bones is just Bones, a country doctor who moved to San Francisco because the wife apparently took the whole damn state in the divorce.

He’s fine.

“I know,” Bones says gruffly, squeezing his shoulder once. His expression abruptly darkens as his scanner whirrs again. “But you are a damn fool.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jim says.

“If you’d just let me give you the damn injection, you wouldn’t have to deal with your periodic crazy, but no, someone has to be the goddamn Super-genius who does that,” here, he motions vaguely in the direction of Jim’s room, “all the while risking, oh I don’t know. Possible seizures, suicide, manic depression, _psychotic breaks_ —”

“You know it’s not that serious, Bones,” Jim says, frowning even as he stands on shaky legs and looks for his keys.

Ok, so, it could potentially, be a little serious. Jim’s never gone to a doctor about it (except for Bones, but he doesn’t count because he mostly just bullied Jim into talking about it). Bones thinks it’s a mild schizotypal personality disorder mixed with OCD that manifests itself in his need to solve mathematical equations. When he was younger, no one except Sam and his mother knew about what his brain could do; they always said it was Jim’s genius and that he was ‘gifted’. But then, when Frank came around, suddenly it was just weird and they never talked about it anymore, and so Jim learned to live with that, to live with the not-talking-about-it.

Bones should get a fucking medal for coaxing Jim to even mention anything about it.

“I’m most productive when I’m…not all here,” Jim says while he rolls his head from side to side. “I can get through shit that would normally take decades of research like that.”

Suddenly, he feels impossibly tired.

“It’s not productivity, you thick-headed idiot,” Bones snaps. He paces irritably to the other side of the living room and crosses his arms. “It’s a disorder that can be neutralized and even cured. This isn’t the 20th century, you know. You don’t have to run around the planet like a damned fool, getting high on radioactive shit that only helps ease away some of your damned symptoms.”

“I know, Bones,” Jim says again.

He goes to the other end of the room, faces the tiny window that overlooks the Castro. It’s brighter than he would have expected out, nearly midday, and he starts counting the little people bustling around the streets before he stops himself with a very deliberate breath of air. He feels Bones come up to his side, hears him sigh deeply before speaking.

“You won’t be any less of a damned genius if you weren’t like this,” Bones says. “Everyone around here thinks you’re damn well smarter than God at this point.”

Somehow, Jim manages to crack a smile.

“Look, let’s just drop it, yeah?” he asks. “You hit me with your handy little Shot of Doom, and look; I’m almost a fully functioning member of society again.” He holds his arms out to his sides as proof of this. “So, look. I’m heading out again. I need to find Chekov. Get him to meet the team.”

He finds his PADD under the sofa, and sends his Engineers a quick mass message. Then he comms Chekov, leaves him a voicemail to be at Scotty’s apartment at oh-nine-fifty sharp, _or else,_ and pulls on his shoes.

“I’m heading out, Bones,” he says, grabbing his keys from the nightstand.

“Now wait just a goddamn minute,” he answers, shaking a finger ominously. “You do realize that you’ve been up the whole night acting like a damn fool, don’t you? You’re not going anywhere until I think that medicine isn’t gonna put you in a coma; do you know how many antidepressants and inhibitors I just shot into your system?”

“Bones,” Jim says, smiling as he swings the door open. “I’ve got a starship to build.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about.”

Jim rolls his eyes.

“I’m just going to see Pike. I promise. Almost no math involved.”

Bones still looks suspicious, but some of his paranoia has been mollified. Pike, after all, is on Bones’ side.

“What do you need Pike for?”

Jim smiles, wide and all teeth.

“I need a particle accelerator.”

With that, he bounds out the door and down the hall.

“What the hell for?” Bones calls out after him.

“I need to create a new element!” Jim shouts over his shoulder, a spring in his step as he hops down the stairs.


	4. This Place at the Crossroads (3/5)

***

  
Chekov is at Scotty’s at 9:50 exactly, waiting for Jim along with the rest of his crew. He fits in perfectly, if you ignore the fact that he’s at least five years younger than anyone else present. When Jim barges into the house at 10:14, it’s to the entire Engineering Team sitting in a semi-circle, cross-legged on the floor, with the equations Jim wrote on his wall already scattered in the emptiness before them as ghostly images on their multiple computer screens..

“Hey guys, I can’t stay long, I actually just came by to—”

“Where did you find this kid?” Rand interrupts him the second he walks in, smiling in a way he hasn’t seen since they first started this project. “He’s brilliant.”

“I know he’s brilliant, that’s why I called him,” Jim says, not a little bit petulantly.

Chekov looks like he’s trying very hard not to look smug, so Jim just rolls his eyes and ruffles the kid’s hair in a way that’s guaranteed to make anyone feel about six years old.

“He’s my star pupil, now isn’t he?” Scotty says as he jumps up and bounds for the kitchen. “Anyone fancy some food?”

The indecisive murmur is enough for him to pull out a loaf of bread and start very seriously constructing some sandwiches. Jim leaves him to it.

“Mr. Kirk,” Chekov says suddenly from across the room. “I mean, Jim. I was thinking. To build new element, with specifications like you have shown here,” he points to a spot on the screen, which shows a standard bell curve with the outlier percentiles marked off, “we will need…funds.”

“Yeah,” Jim answers. “Well, technically, we’d need access to a particle accelerator, and I’m meeting with Pike in a few minutes to figure that out. And then, we’d need to fix up the heap of junk we’ve got as a spaceship and refit the prototype core into it. So, yeah, I could see how we would need funds.”

“Yes, is my point,” Chekov says. “Hikaru, you met, has offered to help independently fund the project, if you needed the help.”

Jim feels his eyebrows climb up into his hairline.

“Seriously?” he says. “That’d be great. Except really fucking expensive on his part.”

“I say this to him,” Chekov answers. “He has friends, inwestors who would be interested too.”

“That’s…really awesome, Chekov,” Jim says. For a second he imagines a spaceship painted in four different shades of neon colors, with logos splashed across the hull like a genuine NASCAR relic. That wouldn’t be too bad, he finally decides; if it gets his ship off the ground. Besides, Sulu’s a licensed pilot, if his indignation from earlier is anything to go by. Jim doesn’t know how to fly a starship. He doubts anyone else does too. “Tell Sulu, thanks, and yeah, we’d love to have him on board.”

Chekov smiles brightly, before going back to his spot between Rand and Ortiz.

Jim feels excitement bubble up his chest again, because things feel like they’re going right, and after so long agonizing over how they were going to power that engine, it’s good to feel like he’s making progress again.

“Shit, I’ve got to go,” he says when Scotty comes back into the living room with a tray stacked high with sandwiches. He takes two and runs back out the door, not bothering to explain himself.

Pike’s buried in a stack of paperwork when he’s waved in, and he barely glances up when the door snaps shut.

“Tell me you’re here to say you’ve given up,” he says, filling out a file.

“You should really switch to paperless,” Jim answers. “We need those trees to produce oxygen, you know.”

Pike chooses to ignore that statement, but that does get him to stop what he’s doing and fix Jim with a glare that’s designed to see through his bullshit.

“What did you need this time?” he asks, already sounding resigned.

“So now I can’t even stop by to check up on you?” Jim tries to sound offended.

Pike glares.

“Okay,” Jim says, defeated. “I wanted to fill you in on our progress so far.”

“You’ve had progress?” Pike asks, way too surprised for Jim’s liking.

“Yeah, we’ve had progress. You were right, though; some of the technology we needed didn’t exactly exist before.”

That makes Pike close his eyes and take a deep breath.

“But I don’t suppose that stopped you, did it?”

“No way,” Jim answers. “Scotty and his squad of sexy engineers have been cooking something up for us and we’re almost good to go. Sort of.”

“Sort of,” Pike repeats, not looking all that pleased.

“Yeah, well, besides actually developing something called ‘transparent aluminum’, we need to invent some elements, have them decay on us and then _wham_. Problem solved. So, I need a particle accelerator.”

Pike blinks once, furrows his brow. Blinks again.

“You’re kidding, right? Please tell me you’re kidding.”

Jim scowls at him and crosses his arms, consciously making the effort to lengthen his spine and appear imposing and menacing in front of the man who’s more of a father to him than he’s ever thought he had a right to have.

“No, I’m not,” Jim answers. “Look. If we take an unstable compound and smash it with hyperheated lithium and radiation, we’ll end up with something different.”

“That can’t be stable.”

“It’s not,” Jim says with a crooked grin. “But we don’t need it to be. It’ll decay within seconds, and the particle’s collapse is what will get that warp bubble to form.”

Pike tilts his head up towards the ceiling; Jim thinks he’s either cursing his existence or praying to someone for patience.

“I suppose you’ve found a way to keep it moving, once you’ve started moving?” he asks.

“Yup. Lithium trioxide. Which is why we need that particle accelerator. We’ve got to make it first.”

The admiral remains silent for a long time. Jim imagines he wants to bang his head against his desk.

“Pike,” Jim says, just a hint of exasperation in his voice. “Admiral. With all due respect, I really need to get my hands on a particle accelerator.”

“I could probably get France and Switzerland to let you use the LHC,” he finally answers.

The Large Hadron Collider is only about 17 miles long, and sure, at its peak it was the finest particle accelerator on earth, coaxing individual atoms to reach speeds up to 90 percent the speed of light. Now, however, it’s outdated and undermanned. Jim needs something better.

“I am not using the LHC,” Jim says. “First, I don’t think Scotty’s even allowed into Switzerland anymore, and Chekov’s only 17; I don’t think I can just take him across the country just like that. Most importantly, that thing is so old. It probably can’t even get an atom of hydrogen moving at 50 percent the speed of light anymore.”

“Since when do you have a teenager on your team?” Pike asks, pinching the bridge of his nose and proving that he doesn’t listen to at least half of what Jim says. “Wait, don’t answer that. I don’t actually want to know.”

“I didn’t kidnap him, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Jim starts. “But whatever. Point is, if you can’t build me one, preferably here, within the next week and a half, I’d kind of like to use the LPA.”

Pike makes a pained face at him; Jim wonders for a second if he’s finally caused the Admiral a heart attack.

“Okay, so now you’re kidding,” he says slowly. “The Lunar Particle Accelerator? Really? How do you expect to get the teenager to the moon if you don’t think you can even get him to Switzerland?”

“I’ll find a way,” Jim answers, making sure to keep his tone even. _This is not a crazy idea_ , he projects to Pike. “And if there’s an explosion, it’s easier to control up there.”

“I really wish you weren’t being serious about that,” Pike answers.

Jim remains silent, waiting. Pike taps his fingers against the wood of his desk slowly, thinking. It’s a gesture Jim remembers from his early teenage years, when he would ask Pike for something particularly insane, and Pike would pretend to put up a fight but eventually give in. It gives Jim hope.

“Do you know how bad our relationship with the lunar colonies is?” he asks, rhetorically, Jim assumes, because everyone knows that. The smile Pike’s been holding back for the last twenty minutes finally breaks through, and he shakes his head slightly. “Well, I’ll give you this, Jim. Your goddamn delusions are doing wonders for global diplomacy. Let’s see if it works for global/lunar relations, too.”

Actually, Jim doesn’t know how to take that statement. He’s saved from remarking on it, however, when his phone beeps at, and he notes that there’s a message from an email that’s all numbers waiting for him. Jim only knows one person on probably this whole planet who’s got an address like that.

“Gotta run, Admiral,” Jim says distractedly, turning on his heel and ambling out the door. “Interstellar starships don’t just build themselves, you know.”

Pike calls after him, but Jim isn’t listening anymore; his attention is completely focused on the message in his inbox. He opens it without a second thought, and just as he had expected, it’s from Spock.

 _I currently have no pressing engagements. Would you be amenable to sharing an hour of repast with me?_

Fuck yeah, Jim answers. _Lunch in 10? I’ll meet you at yours._

That would be acceptable.

Jim knows he’s in trouble the minute he steps out into the hot California afternoon. He’s known this guy for a couple of months and it’s probably not healthy to be this excited about lunch, especially since he hasn’t done anything as bold as he had on their first night together—also, he’s a little embarrassed to admit this even to himself, but he’s seriously considering asking Spock to go to the moon with them. It’s way too early to be considering the weekend-vacation date; it’s fucking weird—also, should he even consider them dating? But there it is. He’s calling it a relationship because he wants it to be a relationship.

Then again, if he’s played his cards right, he’ll be on a shuttle to the moon in under a week—with a team of engineers who’re about to make his dream a reality, if not with a certain man who he can’t seem to stop thinking about. He’s got more reasons than lunch to be in a good mood right now.

****

Spock is concerned over his growing attachment to Jim Kirk. He cannot in all honesty hide behind his mission of data collection, not after he has spent a superfluous amount of time with the human. The fact that he and Commander Gaila have stayed at this particular location for three earth-months speaks more of his growing attachment than anything else.

However, he cannot consider leaving this location. He knows Jim Kirk is very close to creating a fully functioning warp drive, that he has been working on this project for months before he met Spock, and Spock will not miss the opportunity to engage in First Contact once this has been achieved. It is only logical to remain until this occurs.

Whether he will be willing to reveal to Jim that he has in fact been lying about his identity since the two of them met is another matter entirely.

Currently, he is sharing lunch with Jim in a small, vegan-alternative restaurant. It is warm inside, pleasantly so as rainfall began not ten minutes before they were seated. His hands are clasped firmly in his lap as Jim explains to him everything that has happened since their last encounter. Spock is very surprised to hear that he has found a viable substitute for trilithium.

“You have discovered a creative solution to your problem,” Spock agrees when Jim has finished speaking.

Jim graces him with a brilliant smile before turning away reluctantly.

“It’s still just a theoretical solution,” he says. “There’s no way we can actually test it on earth without a risk of, you know, tearing the globe apart from gravitational impulse waves.”

“Indeed,” Spock answers. “Have you already begun work on retrofitting your engine with a chamber to house this particle decay?”

Jim nods once, smiling at the waitress when she arrives with their meals. Spock considers his soup thoughtfully, reminding himself that it is not his place to either help or hinder Jim’s goal.

“Have you considered the possibility of hyperinflation and taken the necessary steps to prevent it?” he cannot help but ask.

Jim only blinks at him for a second, over the rim of his glass.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “We’ll be sticking mainly to the high frequency gravitational wave band; we won’t have anything so volatile that might trigger hyperinflation.”

Spock inclines his head, pleased that Jim is actively searching for any anomaly that may occur in his project.

“You know,” Jim says after a brief pause. “In all the time we’ve known each other, you haven’t once mentioned you know anything about physics.”

Ah. Spock takes a sip of his tea to compensate for the fact that he has no proper answer for the human. He has taken great pains to hide the fact from Jim because he did not want Jim to believe he was offering assistance to his endeavor. He has already interfered far too often; he is constantly running the risk of violating the prime directive. Yet he cannot tell Jim this. Perhaps there is a way for him to redirect their conversation away from the topic at hand.

“I have never mentioned it,” Spock begins slowly, “because you have never asked.”

Jim is silent for a moment, and then he laughs. Spock releases a breath he did not realize he had been holding.

“That’s true,” he says, shaking his head. “All this time I figured you were just humoring me. I thought you were just letting me whine about all this space-warping stuff, like my roommate. If I had known you actually knew what the hell I’d been saying, I would have asked you for your input. I’m sorry.”

“Regret is not logical, Jim,” Spock answers. “And it is obvious you have no need of my expertise.”

“Hey, we can use all the help we can get at this point. Did you know I recruited a seventeen-year-old to help us? You’ll fit right in.”

“Jim, I do not believe it would be the best course of action—”

“No, look, it’s fine,” Jim says, already standing and swiping his credit bar across the sensor. “Come on, I want to show you what we’ve got so far.”

Spock reluctantly follows Jim out, already examining possible excuses he could make that would dissuade Jim.

“Spock! Spock!”

Spock cannot express how relieved he is at the sound of his lieutenant’s voice. He stops abruptly to face her; Jim continues on for several feet before he realizes that Spock is no longer following him.

“Yes, Commander Gaila?” he asks quietly.

“Where have you been?” she asks, apparently unaware that Jim is only several steps away from them. “I just got back from Angel Island State Park. I’ve not seen wildlife reserves open to the public since—”

“Gaila, right?” Jim asks once he is back at Spock’s side.

She blinks once, her gaze bouncing from him to Spock before settling on Jim again. When she smiles again, it is with a certain tightness.

“Hey, you,” she says. “I didn’t think you and Spock would become such fast friends.”

Jim laughs at that. “I take it he doesn’t get out much, if I’m not around to force him to do anything.”

“You could say that,” she answers after a moment. “Spock is more of the observant type.” Here she turns to Spock and very deliberately adds, “Or, at least he’s supposed to be.”

“If you will excuse us, Jim,” Spock says, clasping his hands behind his back to keep them from clenching into fists. “I must speak with Gaila.”

“Yeah sure. No problem.”

“Perhaps it would be best if you returned to your experiment. I estimate this conversation will take longer than would be necessary.”

“Um, okay, sure,” Jim answers, running a hand through his hair. “I’ll catch you later then?”

“I do not intend to flee from you,” Spock answers, unsure why Jim believes he would need to ‘catch’ Spock.

Jim smiles at his statement, looking almost relieved. Spock cannot think why. With that, he turns and quickly disappears into the crowded streets. When Spock turns back to the commander, it is to her frowning countenance.

“I thought we’d discussed this,” she whispers.

“We discussed the possibility of my violating the prime directive, yes,” Spock answers. “However, I have meditated on the situation and have concluded that I am in no danger of doing so.”

The lieutenant frowns for a moment, her arms crossed defensively over her chest, before sighing.

“Are you or aren’t you emotionally attached to this individual?”

“I am,” Spock answers bluntly. “I agree that it was unwise and illogical for me to allow such an attachment to develop, and yet, the attachment is there. However, this slight miscalculation on my part does not preclude a successful mission.”

“Right.” She does not sound convinced. “So you’d be fine with us moving on to a different location to continue our observation then?”

“We cannot leave,” Spock says, “Jim is very close to reaching warp capability. If he does achieve warp speed, this mission becomes a first contact. We will not leave until such an occurrence.”

“Your logic has been corrupted by emotion, sir,” she answers after a pause.

“That was an order, Lieutenant Commander. You are dismissed.”

Gaila blinks once before turning on her heel and storming off. Spock takes a very deep breath and follows her back to their hotel.

One week later, he receives a message from Starfleet command, explaining that their mission has been pulled and that they are to return to headquarters on Vulcan for a complete debriefing. Spock stares at the message for a full three point six minutes longer than is strictly necessary before he turns off his console and goes in search of his lieutenant commander.

**** 

  
When Jim had turned 18 he signed up for the military, and they’d put him on a spaceship as a junior-grade engineer. He spent the first two weeks of his time onboard holed up in the engineering deck, sore from head to toe from all the hands-on work they had him doing. He’d never felt more at home.

He remembers talking to Pike about it, how much he loved that damn engineering deck; Pike had just smiled at him knowingly.

So yeah, climbing into the _Icarus_ , knowing that this ship is pretty much his, that’s a great feeling. He can’t even imagine where he’d be in life if Pike hadn’t been around to bully him into doing something with his life.

It’s a standard long-range spaceship; Jim’s guessing it was built about a decade ago and was meant to travel about as far as Neptune on any given day. The bridge is spotless but outdated, with only enough room for four. He motions Chekov and Sulu over to the navigation console, watching the way Sulu’s face lights up with excitement as they worry about outdated matrices and long range sensors. Jim’s really glad that they’ve somehow acquired a former pilot with a checkbook.

The rest of the team stands around just outside the bridge for a minute, looking in and frowning.

“So, who’s gonna be your bridge staff then?” Rand asks oh so nonchalantly.

Jim shrugs.

“Who says I’ve got any say in that?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Uhura asks. She blinks at him in a really scathing way. “Kirk, every starship needs a captain. And this is your project. For all intents and purposes, when this thing gets off the ground, you’ll be Captain.”

“That is so weird,” Jim says when he can’t think of a more suitable response. “Rand, Ortiz, I want you guys in deck C, making sure life support works ok. We don’t want the gravity simulators to crap out on us halfway to nowhere, do we?”

“No, sir,” they answer in near unison before they honest to god salute him and march away.

“Oh my god, you broke my engineers,” Jim says to Uhura after a beat of silence. “I hate you. Now they’re gonna like, treat me with respect or something.”

“Don’t worry; I’ll be sure to be extra disrespectful from now on. _Captain._ ”

“Aye, she’s a good one for that,” Scotty says. Uhura smacks him sharply on the arm, even though she’s smiling. Scotty ducks good-naturedly and dances out of her reach. “Well, come on then. Got to get a look at this girl’s nacelles, now don’t we?”

Scotty wanders off vaguely to a turbolift, waving his arms madly as he explains something or other to Uhura. Jim watches them go for a moment before he follows, listens to Sulu and Chekov argue physics on the bridge not twenty feet away, and feels at home for the first time in years.

“She’s a wee bit dodgy,” Scotty says in the engineering deck, picking up a wrench from somewhere and banging it lovingly against what looks like a standard anti-hydrogen powered engine. “But she’s in line for some upgrades now, isn’t she? Personally, I think anti-hydrogen went out as a reliable power source five years ago.”

“It’s stable enough,” Uhura answers placidly; Jim gathers that they’ve had this conversation more than once.

“Aye, she’s stable, but that’s not countin’ anything for speed or duration. This lass can’t go more than what? 50,000 Kilometers per hour? Nowhere near what you need to get anywhere outside the Solar System in the time we want it too.”

“But she’ll get us to the Lunar Science Base in one piece?” Jim asks, because with Scotty you need to make absolutely certain you’re talking about the same thing.

“She’ll get us there, no doubt,” Scotty says. “Even if I have to get out and push. And after that, it’ll be easy to refit her with the core we’ve been designing.”

“Great, awesome.” He turns to Uhura and graces her with his customary appreciative look. “How’s the communication station?”

“It was in pretty decent shape when we got the _Icarus_ ,” she answers, mostly ignoring Jim’s antics by now. “I just have to check the subspace frequencies, and key in my control commands.”

“Awesome,” he says again, trying to curb the sudden urge he gets to jump up and down in excitement. “So, you think we’ll be ready for flight within the week?”

Uhura and Scotty share a significant sort of look before turning to Jim in near unison and nodding.

“With Rand, Ortiz and Chekov in here, we should be good to go by Wednesday,” Scotty says, turning his full attention to the engine. They’ve lost him now; it may be days before he pulls himself out of that mess of metal and wires again.

“Are we taking Sulu?” Uhura asks him suddenly. “I think Chekov mentioned that he knows a few things about communications too, and I might need help somewhere along the line.”

“Sulu’s turning out to be Wonderboy or something,” Jim answers. “Of course we’re bringing him along; I think he might’ve volunteered to look after Chekov anyway. Or something. Possibly to get into his pants.”

Uhura blinks at him.

“Chekov’s seventeen, Kirk.”

“Yeah. Well,” Jim shrugs; Sulu, after all, is probably only 21, 22 himself. And if he wants to be hung up on genius Russian jailbait, then who is Jim to judge?

“Not everyone talks to people to get into their pants,” Uhura answers, just a little bit of scorn in her voice.

“You’d be surprised, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me sweetheart. God, ever.”

“You know you love it. Secretly.”

Jim takes that moment to make his speedy exit, since Uhura is glaring at him like she’s thinking up ways of killing Jim quickly while not jeopardizing the current mission. At least she’s got her priorities in line.

Ortiz stops his brilliantly planned exit by bleeding all over the hallway—well, technically she’s slumped in the corner by the turbolift. But, basically, same deal. The whole crew’s surrounding her, except Uhura and Scotty of course. Chekov’s waving a medical scanner around the gash on her forehead, while the others fret around her like mother hens.

“I already told you, I’m fine,” Otriz snaps. “Just go back to your engineering or something.”

“Don’t be stupid, Gloria, your face is nearly split in half,” Rand says, pacing the width of the hallway with her hands behind her back. “You’ll never be able to wear your hair back again.”

“Fuck you, Janice,” Ortiz answers. “I mean, seriously. I’m here, possibly hemorrhaging into my brain and all you can think about is my hair?”

“Is not so bad,” Chekov says in what he obviously thinks is a placating tone. “Only minor concussion. There is old Russian saying: Head wounds like to bleed.”

“That’s not a Russian anything, Pavel,” Sulu says, flipping the dermal regenerator in his hands over and over. “I don’t think you should go to sleep if you’ve got a concussion. That’s an actual thing, right? I’m not just thinking of alcohol poisoning?”

“Okay,” Jim finally says. Four pairs of eyes snap to him suddenly, ranging from genuinely relieved (Chekov) to mildly embarrassed (Ortiz). “What happened here?”

“Turbolift 11 is malfunctioning,” Ortiz explains, waving away everyone’s nervous fluttering for the moment. “I went up to try and fix it, and when it started moving, well, I sort of fell back into the lift?”

Jim blinks at them. He turns to turbolift 11, where its doors are hissing open in a very unassuming way.

“You were assaulted by a turbolift,” he repeats.

“Shut up, Jim. Captain. Sir. Kirk. _Whatever._ ”

“What have I told you guys? Never call me sir. Captain, I can get behind.” He looks up for a moment, a serene expression glazing over his face. “Captain James Tiberius Kirk. I could get used to that. Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Ortiz says, finally letting Sulu stitch together the cut on her head, and after a few seconds, he helps pull Ortiz to her feet.

“Space is a dangerous place,” Rand remarks neutrally as Ortiz walks off with Sulu and Chekov.

“Tell me about it,” Jim answers.

“No,” she says, crossing her arms. “What I mean is, we need someone with a medical background with us. In case we get attacked by something more dangerous than turbolifts. Or catch space plague and end up bleeding out our various orifices.”

“Why, Janice Rand, I do believe you are correct,” Jim says, clapping his hands together with sudden inspiration. “And I’ve got just the guy for the job.”

****

  
When Commander Gaila finally returns to their place of habitation, Spock has already packed up most of their technical equipment and all of his personal affects. She hovers by the doorway for a moment before cautiously entering and sitting in the only available chair.

“We have been recalled to headquarters,” Spock says without looking up from where he is locking up his valise. “I expect us to be ready for departure within the next 20 hours.

“Did you get that message from the Ambassador, too?” she asks.

“I received a message directly from Starfleet command,” Spock answers, curious. “Which ambassador contacted you?”

“Sardak,” Gaila answers, blinking. “He contacted me directly, wanting to know when exactly we would be out of here.”

“I see,” he says even though he does not. “The Ambassador is neither part of Starfleet command nor a direct member of the Federation Council. Why would he have any interest in our terminated mission?”

The Commander only shrugs.

“He doesn’t really like you,” she says, almost to herself. “Maybe he just wants to gloat over your failed mission or something.”

“I do not believe so. There is more to our current situation than it would seem.”

Silence descends upon them as Spock tries to find evidence that may support his claim.

“The Vulcan High Council specifically requested you for this mission,” the commander says.

“How is that relevant?”

“Well,” she starts, standing from her position and pacing the length of the room. “No offence, Commander, but neither of us are exactly diplomatic material. What right did they have to assign you onto this mission anyway? It’s Starfleet business. It stands to reason that someone on the High Council wanted you here, for whatever reason.”

Spock goes over the information once in his mind, considering.

“I can discern no logical reason why I would be volunteered for this mission,” he agrees. “It is debatable, therefore, to say that one or all of the High Council may have had illogical or emotional reasons behind our assignment.”

“One member of the council does hold a supremely illogical grudge against you, sir,” Gaila says seriously.

“The tension between Ambassador Sardak and myself has no logical place in the Vulcan High Council. I cannot believe that he would condone such illogic.”

“And yet, he seemed pretty upset that we haven’t yet left the planet when he had words with me.”

Spock clasps his hands behind his back and allows himself to puzzle over the strange juxtaposition of events for approximately two minutes.

“I was not told why we were recalled,” he finally says.

“Neither was I,” Mister Gaila says. “Who would want us off this planet in such a hurry? And for that matter, why?”

Spock does not have an answer for her queries. However, there may be a logical explanation for this event. It is perhaps plausible that Starfleet would recall them in order to send a proper First Contact envoy. Given that Spock has yet to send his most recent reports detailing the possibility of warp travel here, that option is not very likely.

“Did you know,” Commander Gaila begins hesitantly, “that Ambassador Sardak met secretly with his son, who’s been convicted of serious crimes against the Federation, in unclaimed space months before our assignment?”  
Spock is aware that currently, Stonn is banned from Vulcan and all of Federation space, for suspected terrorist activity to other Federation planets and conspiring with the Klingon Empire.

“I was unaware of this fact,” Spock answers, surprised. “Where did you learn such a thing?”

“I did some research early on,” she responds. “I didn’t like the way he spoke to you.”

“I see. Were your sources reliable? I cannot believe the Ambassador would risk his position on the council by communicating with a convicted enemy of the Federation. Do you believe this incident to be relevant to our current status?”

“Yeah, I do, Commander,” Commander Gaila answers, turning to Spock with excitement written clear across her body. “I don’t think we should leave yet. At least until we figure all this out.”

Spock is sorely tempted to agree. However, he acknowledges that his desire to do so stems from his emotional need to seek closure with Jim Kirk.

“We have been given direct orders from Starfleet command to return to Vulcan and await orders. Your suspicions are based on hearsay and intuition, and until we have more than an intuitive suspicion of the situation, I cannot condone our continued presence on this planet. We will leave tomorrow at 2200 hours, earth-standard.”

“But Spock—”

“That is an order, Lieutenant Commander.”

Commander Gaila is silent for long enough that Spock assumes she has accepted the inevitable. However, when she speaks again, her tone is sharp and biting.

“What do you plan to do about your little human experiment, then?” she asks in a way that is dangerously close to insubordination.

The statement gives Spock pause. He understands, theoretically, that he cannot explain to Jim Kirk the exact reason for his upcoming departure. However, he has not fully considered the consequences of their exodus. Once they depart, it is likely he will never set foot on this planet again, and if Jim fails in creating his warp drive, it is possible that they will never cross paths again. It is a disconcerting thought.

He does not want to leave. Specifically, he does not want to leave Jim Kirk.

“I shall do what needs to be done,” he finally says. “There is no other alternative.”

Commander Gaila looks away from him at that proclamation. If he is reading her correctly, he can detect something very much like pity emanating from her as she reluctantly packs up her sparse belongings.

“I’m sure you will, Captain,” she says.

 

****

  
So, they leave for the moon in about 8 hours, and Jim’s actually starting to get a little bit anxious about the trip. Everything’s going pretty good, for one thing; Scotty’s holding off on any ‘upgrades’ until they get to the moon and see if this gamble is actually going to get them out into deep space, and everything else is running pretty smoothly too. It makes Jim nervous. He keeps getting the feeling that something bad is just around the horizon, like he should be personally overseeing everything that happens, just in case someone makes a tiny mistake and gets them all killed.

It doesn’t really help that now that Rand’s mentioned not having a medic with them, suddenly the whole crew’s afraid of an outbreak of horrible space-pox or something (Jim’s not immune to it either; he hasn’t been able to sleep these last two days because he keeps waking up to nightmares of getting sucked out into the vast reaches of space in a mass of explosions, asteroids, and enemy warships, never mind that he doesn’t even know what an alien warship might look like).

“Not a chance in hell, Jimmy,” Bones says for the umpteenth time that morning.

“Oh come on, Bones,” Jim answers, just this side of begging. “We need you out there.”

“No, what you need is a good old-fashioned kick in the ass.”

Jim’s followed Bones to St Mary’s because he really needs someone to look out for his crew up there in space. And well, Bones is the best. A little bit of astrophobia surely wouldn’t keep Bones from looking out for his best friend.

Apparently, it could.

“What happens if we get cooked by a solar flare then? Or someone catches a space-cold and infects the whole crew, or—”

“Or your damn theoretical warp drive doesn’t work and you all get blown to kingdom-come?” Bones adds in, scowling down at a medical chart this pretty blonde nurse hands him. “Then you’ll all be dead, Jim, while I stay safely alive here with my feet on the ground.”

“If I die in space, I’ll haunt your ass ’til the day you die, Bones.”

“Threats’ll get you nowhere, Jim,” Bones answers solemnly. “No way you’re gonna convince me to follow you anywhere that doesn’t have its own atmosphere.”

“Bones.”

“Okay, look,” he finally says. “Get to the moon and smash atoms together or whatever it is you’re doing up there. If you actually succeed, call me up, and we’ll talk again. But not a second sooner, okay?”

“Fuck yes Bones,” Jim says, slinging an arm around his shoulder. “Have I told you lately that I love you?”

“Quit clogging up my office,” he answers and shoves Jim off of him. “Go update your medical files, in case you end up in emergency care again and someone decides to give you a shot of aspirin. M’Benga! Where the hell’d you get to? I need the files on the McKlein case!”

Jim takes that to mean he should leave now before Bones calls security on him again, and obediently heads home. He needs to pack anyway.

But when he gets to his apartment, he finds Spock outside, standing rigidly by the door. And that’s when he knows that he’s in way over his head, because Spock is just standing there, hands behind his back, and when he catches sight of Jim and the corner of his mouth twitches upward ever so slightly, Jim pretty much melts.

That settles it; he’s in fucking love.

The realization should probably be more terrifying than it actually is.

“Hey, Spock, what’s up?” he says.

“Presently, nothing but the various particles of oxygen, hydrogen and helium that make up the atmosphere.”

“Awesome,” Jim answers, smiling like a loon and not even caring. “Look, listen, it’s great that you came by; I actually wanted to talk to you. Want to come upstairs?”

Spock seems to hesitate at that, he blinks three times in rapid succession and swallows minutely.

“Regrettably, I cannot, Jim,” he says. “There are things which I must also discuss with you, and I am on a schedule today.”

“No big deal, that’s awesome. I just wanted to ask you something really quick.” Jim takes a deep breath, suddenly nervous. He takes Spock’s hand and reminds himself that he’s not asking to marry the guy or anything, ignoring the way Spock automatically tenses at the contact. “We’re heading up to the moon early tomorrow morning, to test the prototype and see if our antiprotons and positrons’ll explode the way we want them too. And I was wondering—wanted to know, if you’d come with us. You know. Come with me.”

Spock looks down at their hands, where he’s slowly running his thumb over Jim’s knuckles, and doesn’t respond. He doesn’t say anything for a really long time, actually, and Jim starts panicking in earnest.

“Hey, if you think it’s too soon, that’s no big deal either,” he backtracks. “I was just thinking you might be an asset to us up there; and if the trip to the moon is a success, then we’ll most likely be heading out past Neptune to try the warp-jump, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to see you after that. I thought it would—”

“I am leaving, Jim,” Spock says suddenly, very quietly.

“What?”

Spock’s eyes snap onto Jim again, like he’s some kind of magnet. There’s a flash of barely constrained hurt hiding in there, but in a second, it’s gone.

“I cannot accompany you to the lunar colony because Gaila and I are leaving. Tomorrow morning.”

“What? To where?”

“It is not within my jurisdiction to—”

“Bullshit,” Jim says, gripping Spock’s hand tightly in his own. This is wrong, all wrong suddenly; how can Spock just be _leaving_? “Spock, look at me, please.”

But he won’t tear his eyes away from the cracks in the sidewalk.

“I am sorry, Jim,” he says, and to be fair, he does actually look sorry. “I must go.”

“I can still comm you, right? Or email you sometime? Spock, at least tell me where you’re going, dammit.”

Carefully, he pulls away from Jim. The second Spock drops Jim’s hand, he feels fucking lost.

“It would perhaps be best if we did not remain in communication,” Spock says slowly; Jim sees the way his hands clench into fists at his side before he clasps them behind his back again. “Live long and prosper,” he finishes, and just like that, walks away.

Jim watches him go, a faint buzzing in his ears; Spock doesn’t once turn back.


	5. This Place at the Crossroads (4/5)

  
Jim’s been to the moon before; back when he was in the military—about seven years ago, he was last stationed at the lunar military starbase, Ft. Skywalker, before he went AWOL. He remembers thinking it was so fucking beautiful, the way the starlight glistened off of the bio-dome that kept them all alive, how they coaxed the dead lunar rock into sustaining certain plant life.

Now it just kind of looks like a fancy plastic prison.

Before, he remembers thinking that this was what he was meant to do with his life; sure, messing around with engines and learning how to kill a man with nothing but the clothes on your back is cool, but out here, in space, this is where he belongs.

And, to a certain extent, he still feels that way when they finally dock at the LPA. Mostly though, he’s got an ugly cloud of uncertainty hanging around him that he can’t quite shake. Jim’s got issues, sure. He’s had abandonment issues ever since Sam ran off to fuck knows where, and a Daddy-complex about a mile wide, but he never thought he’d become that kind of guy, who sits around feeling sorry for himself when he’s dumped by someone he wasn’t actually sure he was dating.

“Are you still moping around because you got dumped?” Sulu asks him, hopping off the _Icarus’_ unloading platform.

Chekov’s right behind them, whispering excitedly to Rand and Ortiz (Scotty and Uhura were the first to disembark; they’re the ones who’re setting everything up with the Lunar Embassy).

“Fuck you, Sulu,” is Jim’s witty response to that. “How did you know about that? Also, how’s it going seducing the jailbait?”

Sulu, the intuitive bastard, doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he frowns a little and claps an almost comforting hand on his shoulder.

“Hey man, shit happens,” he says quietly. “And at least, this way, he wasn’t jerking you around for five years or something before he realized you weren’t what he was looking for. You know? Less heartache, over time. Or something.”

“Yeah,” Jim answers; he doesn’t say that he might actually have preferred that to this ugly feeling of incompleteness that’s been plaguing Jim since he first got dumped outside his apartment yesterday morning. “Come on, let’s go blow shit up in the name of science. That might cheer me up.”

“Attaboy, Kirk,” Sulu says, smiling.

Jim leads the two of them through a scenic route to the LPA, hoping that a nice long walk through a new environment will help clear his mind.

“I was stationed up here for a while,” Jim says suddenly. “Before I started college. I was in the military.”

“How’d you like it back then?” Sulu asks after a moment.

“It seemed beautiful back then,” he answers. “Easier than life on earth, you know?”

“Yeah,” Sulu says. “I could see how that would happen.”

They reach the top of a hill, where a tall grey building is housing the possible answer to Jim’s dreams. Instead, he looks out into the atmosphere across the landscape, at the mess of little houses that line the bio-dome. Just outside the dome, the solid metalwork of the particle accelerator is visible, curving around the horizon. It’s the largest feat of modern mechanical engineering, curving elegantly around 85 miles of the barren lunar terrain. It’s a goddamn thing of beauty.

Behind that, the Earth hovers like a giant illusion, its surface illuminated by the brilliance of the sun. He wonders where Spock is right now, if he’s gone yet to wherever he meant to go. From up here, it doesn’t seem to matter where on Earth Spock’s disappeared to; the entire world seems light-years away now.

“Come on,” Sulu says, clapping Jim on the shoulder and making his way towards where his engineering team is arguing with a moon-scientist. “Looks like your team needs you.”

“You’re right,” Jim says, not taking his eyes off Earth.

Then he sighs and goes to do some damage control. When Sulu and Kirk are within earshot, he notices that the severe looking woman who is currently terrorizing his people looks vaguely familiar.

“Doctor Marlena Moreau,” Jim says once he places the face with a name “I read your paper on dark energy and inflation; it was very good. It’s an honor to meet you. Jim Kirk.”

Marlena smiles back, surprised and only a little forced, before she shakes Jim’s hand.

“Thank you, Mr. Kirk,” she says after only a few seconds of hesitation. “I welcome you to our research facility. I was just talking with Mr. Chekov here, and I’m sure I’ve misunderstood him. You can’t seriously be attempting to, what was it? Create a new element?”

Chekov looks mortally offended at this point, which is pretty understandable, considering Marlena is looking at him like he might have the cranial capacity of a particularly dense toddler.

“Not exactly,” Jim says happily, motioning everyone inside. “But it gets a little complicated. You understand right? Have you spoken with Montgomery Scott and Nyota Uhura? Is everything settled?”

“Oh, yes,” Marlena answers, still looking a little surprised at Jim’s nonchalance. “My scientists will stay out of your hair for two days; it’s about as much as I can give you.”

“Awesome,” Jim answers. “Two days’ll be more than enough time. So, would it be fine if you gave us a moment alone? We need to pow-wow.” Marlena furrows her brow, but eventually, she nods and wanders off, presumably to argue with people who’re actually afraid of her. Jim turns back to his team. “Okay, so you guys got everything you need?”

“Yeah,” Rand answers, pulling out a checklist and ticking items off it silently on her hand. “We just need Scotty to do some calibrations on the LPA database, and we should be smashing particles together within the hour.”

“When’ll they reach the necessary speed?”

“Four hours and twenty-eight minutes,” Chekov answers.

“Cool, awesome,” Jim says again. “So. Scotty’s out being crazy. You guys know what that means?”

“We need to rescue Uhura and ply her with booze before she kills him?” Ortiz tries after a brief pause.

Jim smiles, wide and crooked.

“Damn straight. You guys go find her, and make sure Scotty hasn’t exploded the _Icarus_ yet.”

“You coming Jim?” Sulu asks once Rand, Ortiz and Chekov have more or less run off.

Jim drudges up a smile from somewhere and hopes that Sulu can’t see how forced it is.

“I’ll catch up with you guys in a bit,” Jim assures him. “I just. Give me a few minutes, yeah?”

Sulu looks at him for a really long time. Jim wonders if maybe he’s trying to read Jim’s mind.

“Okay,” he finally says. “Just don’t jump off the moon while we’re gone.”

“Hey, I’m too old for that suicidal depression thing,” Jim says, portraying a lightness he definitely doesn’t feel.

Sulu laughs at that and after only a slight hesitation, heads off after Chekov. Jim waits until the door bangs shut before he lets his smile drop, runs a hand through his hair and sighs dramatically.

It really kind of sucks, how important Spock ended up becoming to Jim in only a couple of months. There’s a really ugly gaping hole somewhere in Jim’s chest that he doesn’t want to think about too hard, but here, with only the relative emptiness of the lunar space station and his own thoughts, that’s all he can think about.

He’s not sure how long exactly he stands around brooding, but he’s vaguely aware of Scotty coming by, and some time later, leaving.

“I’ll round everybody up then?” Scotty asks just before he leaves; it may have been the only thing he’d said to Jim, but Jim’s got a feeling there must have been more because Scotty’s eyeing him with something that looks frighteningly close to pity in his eyes.

“Yeah,” Jim answers, wishing he could muster up at least a tenth of the enthusiasm that spreads over Scotty’s face as he rushes out.

Jim hates Spock suddenly, because not ten hours ago, he’d felt like that; he’d been so fucking excited about coming back to the moon and testing out their crazy theoretical plans. With one damn conversation, Spock took away all of it. It’s not fair that Spock can just suddenly sweep into his life and just as suddenly disappear. That after a handful of days spent together, tea at midnight, lunch on the pier, picnics at the park and afternoons on the beach, he could rip Jim apart so completely.

This is why Jim Kirk doesn’t do relationships.

Somehow, he ends up on the roof, looking out into the galaxy through the three inches of biodome that protects them. There’s no way to really tell how long he’s been out here without looking at his watch, so when his phone buzzes in his coat pocket, he sits up with a start.

“Hey, where are you?” Uhura asks, genuine concern hiding underneath the layer of careful nonchalance.

“On the roof,” he answers idly, not bothering to explain himself.

There’s a pause on the other end of the line.

“Well, get your ass down here again. We’ve got a small problem.”

Jim sighs.

“Ok,” he says. “I’ll be right down.”

So he gazes up at the stars again for one long, lingering minute, wondering at the distance between them, how they can look so close to him and still be so very far away. Then he runs a hand through his hair and heads back downstairs.

It turns out there’s a malfunction at mile 26 of the LPA tunnel system, and Jim elects to go out to manually override the system and figure out what’s gone wrong.

“Be wery careful,” Chekov warns him. “The lithium atoms are in process of acceleration. Any depressurization would ruin the project.”

“I told you that lithium’d come in handy, now, didn’t I?” Scotty pipes up, sounding annoyingly smug.

“We’re using less than 100 atomic masses of the stuff,” Ortiz snaps back. “Not fifty pounds of metal.”

“The point,” Sulu stresses, “is that there may be a static charge somewhere in that section of the tunnel. If anything goes wrong, we’ll end up owing these moon scientists billions of dollars.”

“Yeah, I know. I get it,” Jim answers wearily. “Get in, get out; don’t get blown up. Got it.”

“Take the hovercar,” Rand says, tossing him a pair of keys.

Jim catches them and raises his eyebrows significantly (does not think of a certain someone with amazingly dexterous eyebrows while he does it).

“When did we get a hovercar?”

“When you were sulking over getting dumped,” Uhura answers. “We can’t really take the _Icarus_ out of spacedock every time we want to get a drink, you know.”

“Right, obviously.” Jim turns and makes it to the door before he stops, one hand on the doorway. “Sulu, you’re with me. Scotty’s in charge ’til I get back.”

“Aye sir,” Scotty calls while Sulu jogs to catch up.

“Don’t call me ‘sir’ Scotty, it’s weird. Captain’ll do just fine.”

His team—crew he appends, they’re his mother fucking crew now—laughs; Jim turns away just as they salute him in unison.

“Aye Captain,” Scotty calls back.

Half an hour later, he’s standing outside the shining metallic bulk of the tunnel with Sulu somewhere inside, suited up in their spacesuits because ninety percent of the LPA tunnel is outside the bio-dome. They’re communicating by slightly modified walkie-talkies (courtesy of Scotty) with a direct link back to Uhura, because she of course doesn’t trust either of them not to screw this up.

“How’s that?” Jim asks after he types out a quick sequence on the little data screen to the right of the door.

“Nah, pressure’s still not stable,” Sulu answers after a moment of static. Jim fiddles with the heavy duty clip on his utility belt idly. “And there’s this weird build up of positrons that I can’t—quite—figure out how to dispel.”

“You think that might be the cause?” Jim asks, searching through a new set of codes the LPA’s internal server’s just spit out at him.

“Might be. If I can isolate the positron field and eliminate it, you should be able to see the change on the external readings.”

Jim hums lightly, fingers dancing over the keypad.

“Could we destabilize the dense antihydrogen to compensate?” he asks.

“Not with the lithium flying around the upper chamber,” Sulu’s voice says after a short pause.

“Not so awesome,” Jim answers with a sigh. “Kirk to Uhura.”

“Here,” she says.

“How much longer ’til we need to get Sulu the fuck out of the tunnel?”

“Rand says about five minutes, tops,” Uhura answers after a brief discussion he can only hear snatches of. “Not counting for quantum uncertainty.”

“Oh, quantum uncertainty,” Jim repeats bitterly. “This is what I hate about our jobs, Uhura. Quantum fucking uncertainty can bite my—”

“Fuck yes,” Sulu says suddenly. “Motherfucking crisis is averted, bitches.”

Jim looks down at his readings, which sure enough have the pressure in their section of the accelerator stabilizing.

“Uhura, confirm.”

“Readings are normal over here,” comes the response, and Jim feels a wave of genuine happiness wash over him that he hasn’t felt since touching down on the moon.

“Great, Sulu, get your ass back out here before—” he stops dead, because on the data screen, it’s telling him that phase one is complete, that the lithium’s reached maximum speed, and if that’s the case, Sulu’s got seconds before he’s turned into a pile of useless human-pudding. “Sulu. Get out of there now. Avoid the lasers, lithium, and superheated oxygen.”

“Why are the lasers turning on?” Sulu asks desperately. “They shouldn’t be on until the lithium’s ready to…oh. Oh fuck.”

“Uhura,” Jim says urgently. “I need you to call an EMT like, yesterday. Got it? If I’m gonna get exploded, I want us alive afterwards.”

“What are you--?”

But Jim’s already turned his walkie-talkie off, wrenched open the door and grabbed Sulu by the ankle from where he’s climbing down a metal railing nearly thirty feet high.

“Come on,” he says. “If we’re lucky—”

But Jim Kirk is never very lucky, so at that moment, the ground’s rumbling ominously beneath them, and a split second later they’re thrown down by the force of the explosion. Blinding white light disorients him, and Jim has just enough sense left to find Sulu and clip them together so they don’t twirl out into space before a second, larger crash blows them outside, and Jim’s knocked unconscious.

 

****

“ _Kla-hil_ is prepped and ready for takeoff, sir,” Commander Gaila says from the navigation console.

“Thank you,” Spock answers. “Quarter impulse power.”

“Yes sir.”

The _Kla-hil_ was designed with the intent of having three or fewer crewmembers aboard, and as such has optimized its design to allow for the highest efficiency between the small number of potential crewmembers. As Spock is busy laying in their course to Vulcan, they have left the ship’s communication channel open; Earth’s subspace chatter fills the silence on the bridge as they slowly move away from the planet. Spock must make a concerted effort to ignore the muddle of noise around them; however, when he hears the name James T. Kirk on a transmission, he finds himself quite distracted from his work. He rushes to the communications console to try to isolate the transmission, intent on his task.

“Captain?” Commander Gaila asks. “Something up?”

“‘Up’ is a relative term, Commander,” Spock answers in a distracted manner, not bothering to look up from his work station—he does however, note that his Commander has adopted certain earth colloquialisms that Jim himself was very fond of.

“We’ll be clear for warp in six minutes,” she reminds him. Spock can tell by the sound of her voice that she is intensely curious.

“Understood.”

After another thirty four seconds, Spock has managed to isolate the transmission; it is what appears to be a simple news broadcast.

“In other news,” a female voice begins, “an explosion just outside the lunar colony New Hopewell lit up the northwest region of the moon late last night. The explosion is reported to have been caused by an unstable portion of the Lunar Particle Accelerator 12 miles outside the bio-dome. Two men, James Kirk and Hikaru Sulu, are reported to have been hospitalized with only minor injuries, and no major damage has been reported to either the colony or the research facility. Early this morning in the United Republic of—”

Spock cuts the transmission as dread begins to pool in his gut. Commander Gaila is watching him intently, the line of her shoulders tense.

“Three minutes to warp,” she says. “What do you want to do?”

Spock clasps his hands behind his back; he turns and contemplates the viewscreen intently, where the auxiliary view is showing Earth and its moon hovering in the distance. Spock finds it disproportionately beautiful. For a moment Spock entertains the idea of turning the ship around and finding Jim. It would not be the logical thing to do; it would, however, appease his Betazoid half, which right now is demanding he return to the side of the human who needs him.

“Take us back to Vulcan, Commander,” he says instead. “Base warp speed.”

“Aye sir.”

“And alert Starfleet command on an open frequency that we shall be reentering Federation space within 15 hours.”

“Captain, at warp one we won’t reach Federation space for at least 40.”

“I know,” Spock responds. He returns to the captain’s chair and studies it for a moment before carefully taking his seat. “However, if my theory proves correct, then we may find a most unprepared visitor who will have thought us to be gone.”

“Wait, so we’re actually taking our crazy conspiracy theories seriously?” the Commander asks after a few seconds silence.

“While your argument was not as logically sound as it might have been,” Spock says, “I feel there are certain questions I have that I would be remiss in leaving unanswered.”

Spock puts the shields online and engages the long range sensor disruptor. The disruptor does not make them invisible to an approaching ship; nevertheless, it will provide adequate cover for the ship while they perform their own perfunctory sensor scan.

“Scan the surrounding space, Commander.”

“Scanning,” she answers. “What exactly am I looking for?”

Spock leans back in his chair ever so slightly. He does not have any factual basis for his next claim; instead, he is relying on an old Betazoid tradition, and ‘trusting his feelings.’

“If my presuppositions are correct,” he starts, “then I believe we may encounter either an enemy warship of some kind or an older Vulcan long range starship appropriated approximately twelve point seven years previous.”

When Stonn was first exiled from Federation space, he had reportedly stolen a Vulcan spacecraft right out of Shi’kahr’s spacedock. If his father, the Ambassador, had in fact remained loyal to his son, it would not have been difficult to do so. Spock crosses the small distance between himself and the navigation console and watches Commander Gaila work.

“There,” the Commander says, pointing to the ship on their readings. “It looks to be of Vulcan make, about a decade old.”

So Spock is correct. However, this development only stirs up more unanswered questions.

“Estimated time of interception?”

“Forty-five minutes,” Commander Gaila responds. “I don’t think they’ve spotted us yet.”

“Thank you, Commander. Prepare to—”

“Captain.” The Commander looks up sharply from her console. “Another ship is approaching our location at warp speed. Estimated time of interception three minutes.”

Spock feels his left eyebrow rise minutely in surprise. He leans over her station and studies the figure as it steadily approaches them. It is unlike any warp-capable machine that Spock has ever seen before. Later, he will find it ironic that it is this uncertainty that resolves his mind. There is no logical way to know that the ship approaching them is Jim’s _Icarus_ , or that it is even friendly in nature. And yet, he cannot stop himself from disengaging the sensor disruptors and opening the ship’s hailing frequencies.

“Track the unidentified vessel, Commander,” Spock says.

“Tracking, sir,” she answers. “Locking course to mirror.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Spock answers. “Will you relieve me of the communications station?”

“Sure thing,” Commander Gaila responds, getting up from her spot and hurrying towards Spock. She takes his seat once he moves to stand before their viewscreen. “Are we hailing the incoming vessel?”

“Yes, we are, Commander. This mission has just become one of First Contact.”

****

When Jim wakes up, he notices two things. First: he’s not a pile of steaming meat-pudding, which is pretty awesome. Second, he’s lying down in a narrow hospital bed, hooked up to various machines. The faint buzzing in his ears and lack of pain appropriate to getting blown up tell him he’s probably drugged out of his mind, which is why when he hears Bones’ annoyed yells coming from just outside the cocoon of his bed and hospital curtains, he chalks it up to an unpleasant hallucination.

“I’m his attending physician,” Bones’ voice says from somewhere. “And unless you’re willing to explain to the police why you almost filled that boy to the brim with a sedative that’s listed in his medical files as causing his goddamn lungs to explode _after_ you nearly killed him with some goddamn penicillin, of all things, then you’ll let me in to see him.”

“Bones,” Jim calls (whines more like, but Jim’s been dumped and exploded within the same 24-hour period, and goddammit, he needs his best friend right now).

Sure enough, Jim’s privacy curtains are yanked away, and Bones’ slightly manic scowl is an actually welcome relief.

“I knew something like this would happen,” he says, half to himself, checking over Jim’s life sign readings. “I leave you alone for one day, Jim, and you’ve already landed yourself in medical bay.”

“Hey, I’m not the only one in here,” Jim answers, trying to sit up but being forcefully pushed down again by Bones. “Right? I mean, Sulu, he’s not—he didn’t—”

“Oh, he’s here all right,” Bones says ominously. “You’re in cahoots with a whole mess of idiots, is what I think.”

Jim takes that moment to look around the sterile medical bay. There are only three hospital beds crammed into the room, one of which is empty. Sulu is sitting up in the bed to Jim’s right, in deep conversation with Chekov, who looks like he’s pretty upset, judging from the unnatural scowl on his normally smiling face.

“So, what’s the damage, doc?” Jim asks, smiling in the face of Bones’ murderous glare.

“You’ll live,” he says. “Sulu’s good to go from what I can gather, just as soon as he’s done getting chastised by a twelve-year-old. And the only reason you’re still hooked up to every machine known to God and man is because these know-nothing excuses for doctors didn’t even consult your records before drugging you with penicillin. Bunch of incompetent fools, if you ask me.”

And then Jim can’t help it, he laughs and laughs so hard he’s almost choking on it. Bones crosses his arms over his chest and proves it is indeed possible for his scowl to get any deeper.

“You know how you can remedy that, Doctor McCoy?” Jim asks coyly. “The way to keep me away from the big scary doctors is to come out into space with me.”

Jim expects Bones to mutter something about how he’s a doctor, not Jim’s babysitter, but when he actually hesitates, Jim sits up, quick as lightening, his expression serious.

“Bones,” he says again. “Will you come out into space with me?”

McCoy purses his lips, walks around to the foot of Jim’s bed and hangs up his clipboard. When he speaks again, he’s scowling resolutely at the far wall.

“I’m gonna need that damn tin can’s medical bay in top shape,” he finally says. “And I reserve the right to inflict you onto as many idiot nurses as I see fit.”

Jim’s smile is so wide that his cheeks hurt.

“You can’t fuck around with me on this Bones,” he says. “I’m considering that a spoken contract.”

“Yeah, well.” Bones is actually starting to look a little uncomfortable. “Someone has to make sure you don’t kill anyone, and it sure as hell won’t be that bunch of geniuses you’ve adopted. Not a lick of sense in the lot of them.”

As if to prove Bones’ point, Scotty comes barging in, his laptop opened and precariously balanced in his left arm. He rushes to Jim’s bedside and dumps the machine straight in Jim’s lap.

“Readings’ve just uploaded,” Scotty says excitedly. “Good work by those engineers of ours, I say. What do you want to name it?”

Jim blinks, thinking that he’s under the influence of too many drugs to be able to keep up with Scotty right now. Scotty taps impatiently at the screen in Jim’s lap, where the atomic structure of the lithium trioxide is hovering serenely in cyberspace.

“Oh,” Jim breathes, finally understanding. “Sulu, Chekov, you’ve got to take a look at this.”

“Aye, she’s a right beauty,” Scotty answers as Chekov helps Sulu up and they crowd around Jim’s bed.

Jim kind of feels like he’s just given birth, staring down into the beautiful thing they’ve all just created.

“How long does it take for the thing to decay?” he asks.

“Twenty seconds,” Scotty answers. “With the store we’ve got and the engines we’ve designed, we should have no problems superheating ’em to the proper fusion temperature on board. We’ve been working on configuring this into the base for the warp bubble. We’re thinkin’ this and those handy dense antimercury enginges’ll be enough for the bubble to form.”

“Is perfect,” Chekov agrees. “Will the core surwive?”

“Aye, she’ll hold. All we need now is for the Captain to jump outta his wee bed here, and we’ll be off, now won’t we?”

Scotty gazes down at Jim expectantly, like they’re all sitting around Jim’s bedside because he overslept, and not because he was just exploded and apparently suffered an allergic reaction severe enough to keep him hospitalized.

“Can’t leave until our medical officer here gives me the green light, right Bones?” Jim asks.

“Yeah, well you’re lucky I dragged Chapel and M’Benga up here with me, or else you’d be stuck moonside for at least another couple of days,” Bones says, just this side of smug. “And your readings have all stabilized. I’m betting you’re released within the next two hours.”

“Yeah? Awesome.” Jim flexes his hands, already eager to get back on his spaceship. “Sulu, go tell Team Awesome to be ready for launch within four hours. Also, make sure the _Icarus_ has its medical bay fully stocked.”

Sulu nods sharply and rushes out of the room, Scotty close on his heels.

“You will be much better doctor than Hikaru and myself,” Chekov proclaims seriously after a moment of silence. “We would make terrible doctors.”

“Yeah, I bet kid,” Bones says, but his scowl isn’t quite so deep as Chekov bounds away after Scotty and Sulu; Jim despairs that not even his grouchy best friend is immune to the Chekov-charm.

True to Bones’ word, Jim’s released a full hour and twenty minutes later, and after that it’s only another two before everyone’s back onboard the _Icarus_ again. Jim’s in Medical Bay, listening to Bones rant while Chapel and M’Benga run around taking inventory in a highly efficient way.

Christine Chapel is all blonde hair and long legs, and she has a way of being incredibly vulgar and insulting without you realizing you’re being insulted at all. Jim thinks it’s probably her soft voice that does it, or the way she smiles politely while she completely destroys your self esteem.

M’Benga is like Bones’ polar opposite. He’s patient, mild-mannered, and won’t call you a damn fool no matter how stupid he thinks you are (but Jim doubts that M’Benga has had a negative thought about another human being in his entire life). Both Chapel and M’Benga, however, are pretty terrifying anyway, in that no-nonsense, I-will-inject-you-with-this-needle-if-you-don’t-stay-out-of-my-way kind of way. Jim suspects it might be a pretty desirable trait in a doctor.

“Everything looking good?” Jim asks one last time, after being waved away by Bones.

“Just fine,” Chapel answers. “Doctor McCoy wouldn’t precisely agree—”

“Damn straight I wouldn’t agree!” Bones calls from somewhere in the office. “You call this a medbay? More like a nineteenth century torture chamber, if you ask me!”

“There were no torture chambers in the nineteenth century, doctor,” M’Benga’s deep voice says from somewhere behind one of the examination beds. “Perhaps you meant the eighteenth?”

“I know what I meant M’Benga!” Bones shouts, and that’s when Chapel starts to gently push Jim towards the doors.

“The doctor’s just a little panicked about going out into deep space,” Chapel whispers conspiratorially. “I’ll try to drug him at the next available opportunity.”

Jim laughs at that.

“Consider that an order, Chapel,” Jim says, winking and walking away.

“Ortiz to Captain Kirk,” Jim’s walkie-talkie says—apparently Scotty gave one to the entire crew after Jim and Sulu’s accident. They make for pretty convenient ship-wide communication.

Plus, he doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of hearing these people call him ‘Captain’.

“Kirk here,” he answers. “What’s up?”

“The engines are online and ready for full thruster capability.”

“Great. Awesome,” he says. “Are Scotty and Rand down there with you?”

“Yes sir,” says Ortiz’s voice. “We’re all just waiting on your word.”

“Awesome,” he says again as the turbolift doors hiss open. “I’ll be on the bridge in several seconds. Kirk out.”

When the doors to the ’lift hiss open again, and Sulu, Chekov and Uhura all turn to him, waiting for his orders, Jim feels himself swell with pride.

“Everyone ready?” he asks, clapping his hands and licking his lips nervously.

“Yes, sir. Keptin.”

“When you are,” Sulu answers.

“For ages now, Kirk,” Uhura says, but she can’t quite hide the excitement behind her usual scorn.

“Take us out then, Sulu,” Jim says, sauntering over to his chair. “Thrusters at half-capacity.”

The viewscreen’s been polarized, and so Jim’s got a perfect view of Earth as they break away from spacedock and slowly sail away. And despite everything, he still manages to feel a twinge of regret over how things ended with Spock. Because if Jim hadn’t been so utterly consumed with this, with the warp engine and going out into space, he might have been able to really talk to Spock, get him to listen, maybe even get him to stay. And now, with every second, he’s speeding miles away from any chance to ever see him again.

“Thrusters on full, Sulu,” he says idly once they’re far enough away from Earth.

Under him, the ship thrums with energy, and his entire bridge crew can barely contain its excitement. Scotty, Rand and Ortiz are probably bursting with impatience by now, itching to try out the warp engine. Somewhere down on deck four, he knows Bones is probably hyperventilating, but Chapel and M’Benga’ll take care of that, and maybe the two of them are as interested in this as his engineers are. Not twenty minutes ago, he’d been so fucking excited about this again, but now, it only feels like he’s about to warp away from someone of vital importance.

“Kirk,” Sulu says, snapping Jim out of his depressing reverie. “We’re about thirty seconds away from the Safe-to-bend-space-and-not-get-any-planets-sucked-into-the-bubble-point. Also, we should have probably given it a better name.”

“Cool,” Jim answers. He pushes one of the buttons on his armrest. “Scotty?”

“Scott here,” comes the response.

“Get ready to fire up that warp drive.”

“Aye sir,” Scotty answers. “The core’s on standby.”

Jim waits a couple of seconds, ever one for the dramatics, before he smiles again.

“Awesome,” he says. “Punch it, Sulu.”

The bridge staff is nearly buzzing with anticipation as the warp engine roars to life under them. Jim counts down in his head from twenty, listening to his thundering heartbeat.

When he gets to two, everyone’s thrown into the back of their seats as she does it; the _Icarus_ speeds off so fast that Jim’s mind is reeling.

“She did it, Captain!” Scotty says from engineering. “Warp bubble stable and holdin’.”

Jim can hear Rand and Ortiz’s excited screaming in the background. Chekov and Sulu high-five from across the navigation console, and Uhura actually jumps up from her seat, her face the picture of excited shock.

“Awesome, Scotty,” Jim answers. “How long can we keep her at warp?”

“Theoretically, maybe a few hours with the fuel we’ve stored up,” is Scotty’s answer. “But I wouldn’t push the lass too hard on her maiden voyage, Captain.”

“Awesome, got it. We’ll ease her back onto thrusters after about forty minutes.”

“Aye, Captain,” Scotty answers happily.

And for those few minutes, his entire crew is on fucking cloud nine; Chekov and Sulu talk easily to one another, and when someone cracks a joke, the laughter that rings through the bridge is bright and near hysterical with happiness. Uhura’s on her walkie with Scotty for most of the time too, smiling like the sappy loon she secretly is. Jim sits almost unnaturally still, watching the way the stars flash by and disappear behind them. He’s mesmerized by the view, and when he gives the order to drop out of warp, he thinks that he’ll never get tired of this, of this amazing feeling of accomplishment.

“Well done, you guys,” Jim says, just a little breathless. “Uhura, can you send—”

“Captain,” she calls out sharply, her voice slicing through the jovial atmosphere like a knife. “We’re receiving a transmission.”

Everyone on the bridge stills. Jim blinks at her.

“What?”

“We’re getting a video feed from somewhere,” she repeats.

“Can you figure out from where?”

“Negative.”

“Chekov,” he snaps. “Check the subspace radar.”

“Aye, Captain,” Chekov says, swiveling his chair from the navigation console to the bulky radar equipment beside it.

Jim, Uhura and Sulu watch as Chekov types out commands on the out-of-date keypad, his frown slowly deepening.

“Keptin, there is another ship out there,” Chekov answers, stunned. “It is wery small; no bigger than a shuttle.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Chekov,” Jim repeats. “Uhura, can you put the transmission up directly on the viewscreen?”

“Yeah,” she says, already typing something out at her station. “Give me a sec.”

But when she does, Jim has to blink several times, because clearly he’s seeing things. When that fails to get rid of the obvious hallucination, Jim contemplates calling down to medical for Bones to finally proclaim Jim fucking insane, but at that moment, the figure on the viewscreen takes a deep breath and begins to speak.

“This is Captain Spock, of the Vulcan research vessel _Kla-hil_ , requesting permission to speak to Captain Kirk of the _USS Icarus_. Please respond.”


	6. This Place at the Crossroads (5/5)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starfleet intelligence says that Earth is decades away from developing warp-technology. Then again, Starfleet intelligence didn’t count on one James Tiberius Kirk getting his hands on the issue.

****

No one on the bridge moves for a very long, terrible second. Jim watches the impassive face staring at him from an alien bridge, hardly daring to blink. The long, pointed ears are something new, but if Jim thinks about it, that would explain why he never once removed that damn hat before. Sitting a little off to the side, half cut-off by the screen, is a flash of bright red hair and green skin. Jim doesn’t have to think too hard to guess who that is.

“Uhura,” Jim finally says, thankful that his voice is even. “Can you patch me through on a live video feed?”

“Aye sir,” she says.

Jim remains resolutely in his seat, hoping he projects an air of relaxed confidence that he doesn’t feel at all.

“We’re through, Captain.”

Jim thinks her formality might be Uhura’s way of sparing Jim a modicum of dignity, now that his personal life’s problems are currently staring him in the face; hysterically, he wishes she’d have called him a slovenly hick instead. That at least would have kept this from feeling like some bizarre nightmare that he can’t seem to wake up from.

“Kirk here,” Jim finally says. _But you already knew that, didn’t you?_ “We’re listening,” he says instead.

“The matter I wish to discuss with you is delicate in nature,” Spock says, no hint of the enigmatic man Jim met on earth anywhere on that stoic face. “I would ask permission to transport you to this vessel for a formal briefing of the situation.”

“Oh, so there’s a situation?” Jim asks, unable to keep out the bitterness from his voice. “Well, I’d hate to disappoint, but I don’t think I’m leaving my ship.”

“I see,” Spock answers. Jim can practically see the cogs spinning in his mind, trying to think up an alternative. “In that case, I will transport to your vessel at this time.”

Jim can nearly feel his crew’s protests to that, but the bridge remains resolutely silent.

“Fine.”

“Expect me within the minute,” Spock says, breaking eye contact with Jim for the first time.

Abruptly, the transmission gets cut. Seconds later, little flickering lights appear just before the turbolift doors, and eventually Spock emerges from the cloud of shimmering light. And okay, so that was kind of cool. Jim wants to be impressed, but he can’t really feel anything besides the stupid hope swelling in his gut that’s currently warring with his bitter heartbreak.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Jim says to break the terse silence.

Spock blinks at him, and of course, Spock doesn’t get that colloquialism, he’s a fucking alien. He brings up his hand and mashes his fingers together until they form a V-shape and takes a deep breath.

“Live long and prosper,” he says seriously. “I am Commander Spock of Vulcan. Commander Gaila of Orion and myself are representatives of the United Federation of Planets, an interplanetary federal republic, based on the principles of universal liberty, equality, and civil rights. There is much for us to discuss.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet there is,” Jim answers.

Spock takes a single, hesitant step forward; Jim resists the urge to both pull away and step closer.

“Jim,” he says quietly. “Our personal misunderstanding must resolve itself at a different time. Both of our ships are in danger the longer we remain here.”

That gets Jim’s attention. He motions for Spock to follow him.

“Uhura, you’re in charge,” he calls over his shoulder. “I want you to keep in contact with Spock’s ship.”

“Aye sir.”

Jim relocates them to the conference room on the same floor, sitting himself at the round table and resting his chin on his fist.

“Start at the beginning.”

“Regrettably, I do not think I can,” Spock admits, looking down into his lap. “What you refer to as ‘the beginning’ is nothing more than speculation from Commander Gaila and myself.”

“All right.” Jim pinches the bridge of his nose and ignores the annoying urge he has to wrap his arms around the man—alien before him. “First, give me the facts.”

“Of course. Commander Gaila and I are members of Starfleet, the deep-space exploratory and military branch of the Federation,” Spock begins. “Two months previous, I was contacted by Starfleet command to head an intelligence operation in preparation for possible contact with your civilization. After an arbitrary amount of time elapsed, the Commander and myself were recalled from our mission for reasons that as of yet elude us. However, on a routine sensor sweep of the surrounding area, we spotted a large Vulcan spacecraft heading towards our location. Seconds later, your ship also appeared on our sensors.”

“Okay,” Jim says, resisting the urge to pace up and down the tiny conference room. “So I’m guessing this other ship is the reason you’re all worried.”

Spock doesn’t answer him immediately, but Jim suddenly has a flash of the first night they had met, the way Spock’s head had tilted to the side as he spoke in that pleasantly surprised tone of voice: _you are guessing._ Jim wants to laugh at himself; how had he not guessed this sooner?

“Your planet is in contested space,” Spock says, in a pretty lame attempt to change the subject. “A neighboring planet to earth, referred to as Draylax, has refused admission into the Federation and is known to sympathize with enemies of the Federation. I believe the approaching Vulcan ship was appropriated twelve years previous by a renegade Vulcan, perhaps to aide in the conquest of your planet. It is rumored that Draylax has long desired to build an empire of its own to rival the Federation. Of course, this is all supposition on my part.”

“Oh, of course,” Jim answers, stalling in the hope that any of what Spock just said will start making sense. “So. Okay. Let’s say I believe you, and there’s this _other_ alien ship that we can’t see, who wants to kill us all and then take over the world? Is that what you’re getting at?”

Apparently Jim does live crappy, low-budget sci-fi film. Spock nods.

“Essentially, yes.”

“Right. And, why should I trust anything you say, again?”

They spend a few seconds in uncomfortable silence, eyeing each other. Jim kind of hates himself for still wanting to reach over the table and clasp Spock’s hand in his own.

“Jim,” Spock says, leaning forward and splaying his hands across the shining mahogany surface of their conference table. “I am sorry for the circumstances in which we met. I violated the most important rule of dealing with new species, and my subsequent behavior has been less than adequate. I cannot change this now.”

“I know, Spock.”

Spock hesitates before speaking again, his hands making an aborted movement on the tabletop.

“I hope you know that while I kept my purpose on Sol III, Earth, hidden from you, my intentions were never falsified.”

“I trust you,” Jim says almost automatically, hates that he can say that so honestly to this man he now knows nothing about. He frowns at himself and nearly jumps out of his chair. “Come on then,” he says. “I need to talk to my crew, since, as far as they know, you’re still the jerk who dumped me and nearly ruined this trip for us.”

Spock raises his eyebrow in that way Jim’s totally crazy for, and when Jim leaves the room, Spock’s at his heels in an instant. When the doors to the bridge hiss open again, it’s to Gaila’s voice laughing on the viewscreen, apparently getting chummy with Jim’s bridge crew.

“If we’re done with the giggling, there’s a probable crisis we need to sort through,” Jim says, and the laughter abruptly dies off.

“My fault, Captain,” Gaila says with a wink. “You’re crew was just showing me how to work this closed-circuit communication system—what did you call it? A ‘walkie-talkie’?”

Gaila holds up one of their walkies between her thumb and her pointer like it’s made of glass.

“How’d you get that?” he asks.

“Nyota let me beam it over,” she answers; Jim tries really hard not to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“All right. I’m guessing you filled my guys in, then?” Jim asks.

“Yes, sir, she did,” Chekov answers from his spot at the navigation console.

Jim smiles.

“Awesome. All right then, any suggestions? This includes you too, Gaila.”

No one on the bridge says a word, so with a sigh, Jim turns to Spock again.

“What should we be expecting from that other ship?”

“If that ship is being led by Stonn, son of Sardak, then he would have known we were either out of the area by now or about to depart,” he says, taking a step forward to stand beside the Captain’s chair. “He may be attempting to contact your planet to forge a peaceful alliance.”

“He could just be trying to kill you,” Gaila chimes in from the viewscreen. One of Spock’s eyebrows shoots up. Gaila shrugs at all of them. “Stonn’s got some sort of vendetta against Spock,” she explains. “It’s all pretty convoluted, but it could be reason enough to want you dead. What’s that saying you guys have? ‘Killing two birds with one stone’? He might be helping out the Draylaxians, sure, and if he gets the chance to kill you while he’s at it, why not?”

Jim gives in to his anxiety and begins to pace the length of his bridge while Spock answers.

“It would explain my seemingly arbitrary inclusion in this mission,” Spock conceeds.

“Um, Jim?” Sulu whispers as he edges past the navigation console. “How do we know that your, um, ex-boyfriend-slash-alien-dude isn’t well, lying? What if they’re secretly the evil aliens or something?”

Jim can only shrug, not a little helplessly; his confident _I trust you_ seems a lot more feeble to anyone who isn’t Spock. He’s saved from having to come up with an actual response, however, when a look of sheer panic crosses Gaila’s face.

“Captain Spock, sir,” she says urgently. “The stolen Vulcan vessel will intercept us in less than five minutes. Recommend you beam back onto the _Kla-hil_ immediately.”

“Understood, Commander,” Spock says as he turns to Jim. “If that ship comes bearing hostile intentions, would the _Icarus_ be able to escape back to your solar system were we to provide you with suitable cover?”

Jim looks around at the slightly stunned faces of his bridge crew; none of them had expected to out-run an alien starship today. He shakes his head.

“It takes twenty seconds for our warp drive to engage.”

“I see.”

“Commander—” Gaila urges.

“Energize, Commander,” Spock says, staring Jim down with that unnerving, unblinking look. For the three full seconds it takes for Spock to disappear again, the air is nearly crackling with the tension in their gaze.

“Captain, I’m getting another message,” Uhura says only minutes later.

“Put it on audio, Uhura,” Jim says, taking a seat in his Captain’s chair and hoping he isn’t shaking too much. “I want whoever’s on the other end of that call to think we have no idea Spock’s ship is out there.”

****

“Take us out of range Commander,” Spock says when he crosses the four meters between their transporter room and the bridge.

They do not have to travel very far before the ship disappears from normal sensor sweeps; the _Kla-hil_ is small enough to be undetectable at larger distances without a more specific scan of space. Even so, Spock does not like being on board his ship with no knowledge of what may be transpiring onboard the _Icarus_.

Then he hears Jim’s voice from Commander Gaila’s workstation. Quietly, Spock approaches the Navigation console; Gaila turns to him and smiles brightly.

“Isn’t it interesting?” Gaila asks, motioning to the device in the brief silence. “It has only a one-way input system, so while we can hear them, they won’t hear us.”

“Fascinating,” Spock answers before the unmistakable sound of Stonn’s voice filters into their bridge.

They listen in silence for several minutes; it sounds as if Stonn is attempting a First Contact of his own. He attempts initiate some sort of conference and speaks for a length of time on the building of a new empire. Spock infers that he is working in tandem with Draylax.

For the first time in a very long time, Spock does not know what to do. He knows Jim will refuse Stonn’s offer of camaraderie, knows afterwards Stonn and his crew of Draylaxians may then proceed with their next logical course of action (Jim’s ship is unnecessary if they mean to join Earth with Draylax in a new empire; it stands to reason that if Jim fails to cooperate, they may be destroyed as a result). He knows that Jim’s ship cannot outrun even an outdated Vulcan vessel, and if in a serendipitous stroke of fortune, something malfunctioned on Stonn’s ship, the _Icarus_ would not be able to flee. It takes the _Icarus_ twenty seconds to engage its warpdrive. That is more than enough time to fire upon an unarmed vessel. There is only one logical solution.

Spock must eliminate the pernicious element in this equation.

“Commander Gaila,” Spock says once he has decided. Gaila’s eyes snap to Spock; clearly she has been wondering over what should be done as well. “I want you to beam yourself onto the _Icarus_. Preferably somewhere other than the bridge.”

“What are you thinking, Captain?” the Commander asks curiously even as she stands to follow his orders.

“It is only logical to award loyalty to the more powerful opponent, Captain Kirk,” Stonn’s voice says from the communicator.

“Is that a threat?” Jim’s voice answers.

“There is little time, Commander,” Spock says. “I will give you two minutes to beam aboard the _Icarus_ before I engage the sensor disruptors.”

“You can’t use the transporters with the sensor disruptors on.”

“Yes, I am aware of that, Commander.”

“Spock—”

“You are dismissed, Commander,” Spock answers, his voice tight.

Commander Gaila blinks once, shocked, before she sweeps out of the control room. Spock takes a single measured breath, fingers flying quickly over the navigation console as he computes where the best place on Stonn’s ship is to lock in his collision course.

There is no other option available to him, Spock reminds himself. Jim’s ship is ill prepared to engage a Vulcan vessel in a battle, and likewise the _Kla-hil_ has little in the way of weaponry. He understands the irrationality behind his decision, as there are too many mitigating circumstances to fully condone crashing his ship into an enemy vessel, and yet he could not think of a better alternative with so little time to properly think through the problem. At any rate, the needs of the many will always outweigh the needs of the one. His life, in this case, is negligible. It will be well worth the effort if Jim is alive and unharmed after this.

Spock listens to the quiet murmur of voices that fills the silence in growing anticipation.

“Hate to disappoint, Stonn,” Jim’s voice finally says, “but we’re gonna have to pass on your offer.”

“I see,” comes the reply. “It is of little relevance. However, as neither your ship nor your crew is necessary for the success of our conquest, we have no compunctions with destroying your ship, thereby preventing you from alerting your government of our intentions.”

There is what sounds like a brief scuffle on Jim’s bridge, before an ominous crash knocks the communicator silent. Spock checks his readings and sees that the _Icarus_ has indeed been fired upon; it seems as though the ship has managed to shield itself from the blast so that not much damage occurred. Spock does not waste time. He engages the sensor disruptors and sails towards the enemy vessel at full impulse power.

“Spock, you better get your ass over here,” Jim’s voice says from the earth-made communications device, still sitting on the navigation console. “I really don’t want to die on your ship.”

For one-point six seconds, it feels as if Spock’s entire being ceases to function. He cannot feel himself breathing, cannot feel his blood course through his own body; what is Jim doing on the _Kla-hil_? And then he is moving again, shutting down the sensor disruptors and racing towards his transporter room, where he finds Jim standing by the transporter console. There is not enough time; they have seconds only before they collide with Stonn’s ship. Spock crosses to Jim and quickly initiates the beaming sequence. _There is not enough time_.

Jim grabs Spock roughly by the hand and leads them towards the transporter pad, latches himself onto Spock’s neck at the precise moment when the energy beam catches them, and they are transported out.

“I almost though you wouldn’t make it out,” Jim whispers into Spock’s ear once they have rematerialized onto Jim’s ship. The area is deserted; Spock presumes that everyone is currently on the bridge, doubtless worried about their captain.

“If you had not been aboard the _Kla-hil_ , I would not have bothered to do so,” Spock answers honestly; enough half-truths and lies of omission have already existed between them for Spock not to be completely truthful now. “How did you manage this feat?”

Jim’s hand travels to the back of Spock’s neck, and he rests his forehead against Spock’s. Spock feels the rate of his breathing stutter slightly at the motion.

“Gaila had an inkling you’d go martyr on our asses,” Jim breathes. “While your buddy Stonn thought we were talking the situation over, she was really sending me a message over our closed circuit. Pretty handy, if I do say so myself.”

“Indeed,” Spock answers.

Jim takes a deep, shuddering breath after that and tightens his grip on Spock.

“God, I hate you,” he whispers in a voice that sounds like it has been wrenched out of him against his will. Spock places a tentative hand on Jim’s waist to keep himself grounded. “You nearly fucking leave me twice within the same damn 48 hour period, and look, I don’t even care if you don’t, whatever, love me like I think I do you, but just give me a minute to revel in the fact that hey, you’re not dead. Yeah?”

There is much still to do. Spock must speak with Starfleet command and explain why the mission became a First Contact; likewise he will need to inform the Vulcan High Council of Stonn and Ambassador Sardak, will have to begin his report on the destruction of the _Kla-hil_. However, he can feel Jim’s relief bleeding into his skin, even through the fabric of Jim’s shirt, and for a moment, Spock acquiesces to the request.

 

****

Jim only lets himself hang on to Spock for another three deep breaths, before he forces himself to take a step back.

“I need to check up on my crew,” he says, grateful that his voice doesn’t shake. “You should look around for Gaila, to see if she made it aboard safely.”

Spock nods almost absently.

“I must also send a report to my superiors, detailing the events that have transpired.”

“All right,” Jim says. “Meet you on the engineering deck in half an hour?”

“That would be acceptable.”

Jim watches Spock walk off, his hands clasped neatly behind his back. Their eyes meet briefly when Spock enters the turbolift, and for a second Jim can see a shadow of that soft almost-smile before the ’lift doors close and he’s left alone on in an empty hallway. Jim sighs and heads for the medbay.

Predictably, Bones is having a shouting match with someone when he gets there. Gaila is sitting on a biobed, kicking her legs absently and speaking in a low voice to Ortiz, who likewise is sitting around on a biobed. Bones is scowling heavily at his scanner, Chapel smiling sweetly beside him. Jim’s a little surprised to see Ortiz up here.

“I don’t even know where I’d begin calibrating this thing,” Bones says, just a hairsbreadth from hysterical. “You’re sure green is normal for your people?”

“Yup,” Gaila says, smiling brilliantly when Chapel hands her a glass of water. “Green and blue.”

“Oh great, that’s just—” Bones stops his complaining when he catches sight of Jim, and points an accusatory finger at him. “This is your fault.”

“Is not,” Jim answers automatically, even though this time, it kind of is. “And anyway, would you rather I left her on Spock’s ship while we blew it to bits?”

Something weird happens to Bones’ expression then, like he’s trying to convey sympathy while keeping the integrity of his scowl intact. It doesn’t quite work.

“So that pointy-eared bastard really was Spock then?” he asks. “I thought Uhura was just pulling my leg when she said that.”

“No, yeah, it was Spock all right,” Jim answers. He really doesn’t want to have this conversation right now. “Look, I just came in to see how you were handling your first patient of the trip.”

“As well as can be expected,” M’Benga says from the other end of the room, coming over with a tray laden with neatly organized injections. “Given the circumstances.”

“Don’t be a fool M’Benga,” Bones says. “We don’t know what the hell we’re doing! As far as I know, this girl could be seconds away from death!”

“I’m sure I’m in peak physical health, Doctor,” Gaila reassures him happily. “I just had a complete physical before I left Betazed.”

“Which way is that?” Chapel asks.

“Not more than a couple parsecs that way,” Gaila says, pointing vaguely in the direction of the open doors.

“So, med team, what’s my engineer doing up here?” he finally asks.

Ortiz rolls her eyes and motions down to her ankle.

“Twisted it,” she says sharply.

“Nothing serious,” M’Benga assures him. “We fixed her up a couple minutes before you came down.”

“Oh awesome,” Jim says, relieved that nothing more serious has happened to her. “Ortiz, you’re a klutz.”

“No shit, sir,” is the response he gets, and the laughter that bubbles out of the room at that is pretty damn soothing, if you ask Jim.

Bones, however, looks about ready to order his medbay into silence, but Jim pushes him away and towards the little office in the back before he can so much as open his mouth.

“Hey, I need to talk to you,” he says seriously, and Bones’ expression shifts to one of genuine concern.

“What I don’t get,” Bones mumbles quietly when Jim doesn’t start, “is how you didn’t figure out about those aliens in the first place. Wouldn’t you have been able to tell Spock wasn’t…you know. ‘From around here’ once he’d dropped his pants?”

Jim cringes at Bones’ assumption, which only makes his eyebrows rise in surprise.

“We never—” Jim starts, has to stop when he hears the waver in his voice. “I wanted to wait until he was ready.”

“Oh shit, Jim,” Bones says, pity clear in his eyes. “Once we’re back home, I’ll pull out the single-malt and you can drown your sorrows in it. Doctor’s orders.”

Jim takes a deep breath and manages to force a smile to his face.

“We might not be back for another while,” he answers apologetically. “I still have to confer with Scotty to see if our warp engine survived the first jump, and then there was that whole, getting shot at by alien ships thing.”

That seems to pull Bones out of his concern. He scowls furiously and pushes Jim towards the exit.

“Dammit Jim! You never said there was a possibility we’d be stuck in deep space for eternity!”

Jim laughs—it only sounds a little hollow to his own ears—and rushes out, grateful to know that at least half of his crew (and Gaila) are unharmed. The bridge is his next stop, where Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura are still at their posts, looking a little shaken but otherwise unharmed.

“Hey guys,” he says taking a moment to collapse into the Captain’s chair. “Report.”

“The warp engine’s offline,” Uhura says. “Scotty said he wants to be sure we don’t explode when we try it out again.”

“Awesome,” Jim says, not that he expected Scotty to do anything different. “Did you guys get a look at that other ship?”

“Which one?” Uhura asks.

“Both.”

“Aye sir,” Sulu says, sharing a meaningful look with Chekov. “They were pretty damn terrifying.”

“Yes, but wery adwanced,” Chekov adds. “It is shame we could not study them before they were destroyed.”

“Yeah, that’s the real tragedy, Mr. Chekov,” Jim says with a smile. “So are we all good up here? I need to go down to engineering.”

The three of them nod, and Jim sighs heavily before he drags himself out of his chair.

“Uhura, you’re in charge.”

“Aye, Captain.”

The engineering deck is comfortingly loud and full of controlled chaos. He finds Rand standing by the energy generator she and Ortiz designed, handing random tools to Scotty, who is only a pair of feet under the hulking machine.

“Everyone alive down here?” he asks.

“As alive as I’ll ever be,” Rand answers, smiling brightly.

It suddenly occurs to Jim that she and Scotty have absolutely _no idea_ how close they’d all just come to their sudden deaths. He’s actually pretty grateful for it right now; he doesn’t have to pretend not to be compromised by Spock’s presence on his ship, here.

“Can’t say the same for our pretty lass here, though,” Scotty’s muffled voice says from under the engine.

Jim pales. “Wait, but she’ll run again, right? We’re not gonna end up stuck out here until our life support fails, are we?”

“Don’t worry Captain,” Scotty says determinedly. “She’ll get us home, even if I have to get out and push.”

“To be fair,” Rand stage-whispers, “He’s just recalibrating her system. In about fifteen minutes, there’ll be nothing keeping it from running smoothly.”

“Aye,” Scotty calls again. “If you’re in any kind o’ hurry, you could take us out on thrusters ’til we’re done.”

“I’ll keep that in mind Scotty,” Jim says. “But for now, that’s all I need to know.”

Rand is about to respond to that when the smile drops off her face suddenly; her eyes are on something close to the turbolift, and when her face transforms into sudden disbelief, Jim can guess who’s standing back there.

“Is that—”

“Yeah,” Jim says. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you when we’re home.”

Rand purses her lips in disbelief, but at that moment all Jim can think about is Spock. Jim turns around and sure enough, Spock’s standing there with his hands behind his back, as usual.

“Walk with me,” he says curtly, eager to get away from the prying eyes of Rand.

Spock falls into step beside him easily, like they’ve done this their entire lives.

“So did you get everything sorted out?”

“I have spoken with my commanding officer,” Spock says. “As well as several members of the admiralty. They were less than pleased to note that the Vulcan High Council has been in communication with a previously excommunicated felon. Ambassador Sardak may be charged with treason.”

“One of these days you’ll have to explain all of this to me when we’re not in danger of getting killed,” Jim says, before he realizes that there may never be a next time. Beside him, Spock stills. Jim turns to face him awkwardly.

“Jim—” Spock starts, but Jim cuts him off with a sharp shake of his head.

“No, yeah I get it,” he says. “After this we’ll probably never see each other again. Um. So how did your commanding officer take the news?”

It’s a desperate attempt to change the subject, but for once, Spock doesn’t comment on it.

“He did not ‘take’ anything,” Spock says, sounding confused. Jim smiles at him fondly; Spock seems to realize his mistake and tries again. “Starfleet will be sending a convoy of ambassadors to Earth, to offer it membership into the United Federation of Planets.”

And that’s pretty great, except actually not what Jim wants to know.

“But what did they say when you told them you failed your mission? After all, I don’t think you were sent out with the intention of getting your ship exploded.”

Spock blinks at him, not saying anything.

“You are safe,” he finally says, and brings his hand up, haltingly, to rest against Jim’s cheek. Jim would be lying if he said that single touch didn’t send sparks of hope fluttering through his core. “Your crew and my own remains unharmed. The _Icarus_ remains intact. Jim, I would count this as a victory.”

Jim doesn’t have an answer to that; he can only stand to look Spock straight in the eye for about two seconds before he lets his line of sight drop to the floor.

“For my crew, I guess,” he answers. “I still don’t like that you had to explode your ship.”

“It was necessary,” is Spock’s answer.

Jim shrugs haphazardly, still resolutely avoiding Spock’s gaze. He tries not to mention that he thinks his chances with Spock have officially dropped down to less-than-zero-percent, what with Spock about to zoom off to the other end of the galaxy and everything. That would just be kind of pathetic.

“Jim,” Spock says, tilting his chin up until he’s forced to look Spock in the eye. “My species is a race of touch-telepaths.”

“Okay.”

“To be clear, I can infer certain thoughts from you by skin-to-skin contact.”

Jim blinks.

“That…doesn’t actually make anything very clear, Spock.”

And then Spock kisses him, sweet and tender, the barest whisper of a kiss, really, before he huffs a breath across Jim’s cheek.

“I mean to say that your ‘chances with me,’ as you so vaguely put it, are significantly higher than zero.”

“Oh.”

So he does the only thing he can think of to do; he kisses Spock again, wet and dirty this time, like they’re alone in his bedroom and have all the time in the world, not in the middle of a hallway on a spaceship with 10 other sentient beings on board with them. And now he can tell why Spock never kissed him like this before; it would have been a dead giveaway. Spock’s mouth is hot as the goddamn sun itself, drier than he would have thought possible, and his tongue is scratchy and rough and really damn flexible. Jim gets lost noticing all the little differences here, until he has to pull away to take a breath and—fuck. That was—really fucking amazing.

“How long to you project it will be before we are back in your solar system?” Spock asks idly, and it takes Jim a moment for his brain to switch tracks again.

“I don’t know,” he finally answers, licking his lips and watching the way Spock’s eyes trace the movement intently. “I was thinking we could just ride back on thrusters for a while. I don’t want to risk damage to the core. Rand, Ortiz, and Scotty—”

“Are more than capable of handling the engines, if your previous endeavor is any indication of their efficacy,” Spock finishes for him.

“What about you and Gaila?” he asks.

“I have already informed my superiors of our location. If you would suffer with our presence for a bit longer, we will be content to remain on Earth until the Federation convoy arrives. From the conversation you briefly held with your crewmates, it appears as if your warp drive is fully functional.”

It takes Jim a couple of seconds to understand what that means, exactly, but when he does, his smile nearly splits his face in half. Spock’s not going anywhere.

“I’d feel safer if we at least started the trip back on the thrusters.”

“Jim,” Spock says patiently. His fingers tangle gently in his hair. Jim tries not to shiver at the feel of it. “Your crew came out here for a single purpose. Will you deny them this moment in history?”

Slowly, Jim smiles. Spock’s right; this, right here, is where Jim wants to be.

“You’re right, Spock. Come on.”

So he turns on his heel and takes off at a near sprint to the bridge, Spock right at his heels.

“Mister Sulu, Chekov,” he says when he bursts back onto the bridge, “prepare to go to warp. Again.”

They turn to him and blink in disbelief.

“Sir?” Chekov asks.

“You heard the Captain,” Uhura says from her seat, smiling at Jim in the weirdest way (it looks almost like respect).

“Right,” Chekov says. “I mean, aye, Captain.”

“Plot a course home,” Jim says, reaching his seat and reclining back.

“Course laid in, sir,” Chekov replies, a wide grin splitting his face in half.

“Everyone ready?” His bridge crew nods hurriedly, and after a second he thumbs the ship-wide communication system. “Kirk to Engineering: anything exploded yet?”

“Negative, Captain,” Rand’s voice answers. “Warp core readings are at the projected energy levels.”

“Awesome. Medical, buckle up.”

There’s a slight scuffle from the medical deck, before Chapel’s amused voice comes on the line.

“Acknowledged, Captain.”

Spock comes to stand beside him, hands clasped behind his back and just the hint of a smile gracing his features. Jim could definitely get used to this.

“Take us home, Sulu.”

The _Icarus_ shudders slightly from having to jump to warp again, clearly unused to bending the laws of physics, but when she finally speeds off, turning distant stars into smears across the viewscreen, Jim thinks he can forgive her.

In about an hour, the whole world’s going to know they were within spitting distance of Sirius, and Jim fucking can’t wait to make history.

  


******

 

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Star Trek and all related people, places, things and events are the property of Gene Roddenberry, Viacom, Paramount Pictures, CBS and other very important people who are most decidedly not me. No money is being made off of this and no copyright infringement is intended.


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